adjustments for differences in the supply prices of education inputs across school districts. Urban school districts often receive additional state education aid per pupil based on the beliefthat such districts face relatively higher supply prices for education inputs. This article evaluates the utilization oflocation as an indicator of district supply price differences by presenting a model to test whether location alone is the appropriate criterion for the adjustment ofstate aid to reflect such differences. If other district characteristics are more influential in the determination of supply prices. then these might also be included in the state aid adjustment technique. The article compares the distributional consequences of a more comprehensive adjustment procedure which includes district characteristics with the simpler locational weighting procedure.State grants-in-aid represent the primary instrument to • promote equality of educational opportunity among school districts within a state. These education grants are generally distributed to provide more assistance to school districts with a relatively low property tax base and relatively high tax effort. Objections have been raised to this reliance on property values as an accurate measure of equal opportunity. Specifically, two studies (Levin, Muller, and Sandoval, 1973; Reischauer and Hartman, 1973) indicate that urban school districts pay higher prices for a unit of education than do their rural counterparts. Consequently, a dollar of state aid to urban districts would represent lower real
State education aid plans do not ensure attainment of horizontal equality defined as equal real purchasing power across regional districts. Adjustment is proposed primarily for demand factors with supply factors completely ignored. This paper focuses on the feasibility of adopting a real resource standard, specifically (1) how to define and quantify differences in real purchasing power, (2) how to incorporate these regional differences into a state aid plan, and (3) what to expect as the necessary aid adjustment. The measure of real resource inequality is limited here to regional differences in the supply price of teacher services in Wisconsin. The transformation of an education aid formula to incorporate these differences does, however, generalize to all general education aid programs. The adjustment of state the to account for regional differences in supply prices would lead to greater state aid for suburban and intermediate-size units relative to aid adjustment for urban and rural units. The aid adjustment for selected distric ts in Wisconsin is presented.
AYS OF PROVIDING elementary and secondary education have been re-evaluated and debated continuously over the past two decades. Recent events such as tax revolts, unionization of and strikes by public school teachers, dissatisfaction with student performance on standardized examinations, and judicial disputes over busing, school effectiveness, and resource distribution have intensified this debate.Analysis of the distributional impacts of legislation addressing some of these problems has focused on the amount of state aid that would be forthcoming to particular school districts under alternative state distribution plans. In particular, much attention has been directed to measuring the ability of the school district to finance a specific level of educational expenditure (nominal or real) per pupil and then to defining the role of the state in supplementing local effort in order to guarantee a specific level of expenditure per pupil. The evaluation criterion then applied to these supplementary aid programs has been narrowly defined by the success of the program in targeting assistance to relatively poor districts and the consequent "leveling-up" of expenditure per pupil across school districts in the state. If, for example, relatively poor districts (defined in terms of financial ability) generally receive more state assistance per pupil than wealthier districts, then the state aid program has been deemed distributionally progressive.However, this asymmetric evaluation of the distributional consequences of state aid to school districts is not sufficient to ascertain whether the net distributional effect of a state aid program is progressive (favoring districts with a relatively low ability to finance education), regressive (favoring districts with a relatively high ability to finance education), or neutral. Furthermore, the focus on the distribution of state aid or program benefits to particular school districts in the state without considering the contributions or program taxes provided to the state Dr. Wentzler is an economist for the Office of Management and Budget, Washington, D . C .fund by the respective district may yield policy prescriptions with undesirable net distributional consequences. A complete determination of both the benefits and the costs of the state educational program to the school district must be provided in order to evaluate more accurately the programmatic impacts.The objective of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the net impact of state education aid to school districts, using data for the state of Pennsylvania. District aid data for Pennsylvania are readily available. Therefore the focus of this paper is on estimating school district contributions to the state education fund. Because two major sources of education funds in Pennsylvania are the sales tax and the corporate income tax, the estimation of the school district contribution must take into account the potential for shifting these taxes to other districts. A consensus is not apparent in the literature as to the extent of ta...
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.179.This volume provides an excellent collection of 11 articles and accompanying comments on the role of women in the labor market. The book is divided into five parts: household decision-making and labor supply, labor supply projections, career decisions, wage differentials, and Equal Employment Opportunity influences on male-female wage and employment differences. The objective, as stated by the editors, was to provide theoretical and empirical ammunition for public policy decisions. However, the papers in this collection also accentuate the need to reevaluate the application of traditional theoretical models to the labor market for women. Many of the authors are proposing new methodological approaches to the issues addressed as much as they are investigating the specific hypotheses. Consequently, the evaluation of this book must focus on the resolution of the following two concerns: First, does the author satisfactorily test the hypotheses derived in the paper? Second, would the methodology utilized by the author eventually lead to a better analysis of these and other issues?Marilyn Manser and Murray Brown present a bargaining model of household decision-making. Their objective is to reduce the compartmentalization of household decisions concerning marriage, labor supply, and consumption. The model they developed as a substitute for the traditional neoclassical approach allows for varying distribution of power between the contracting parties. Hence, rather than arbitrarily imposing an aggregate utility function on the household, Manser and Brown investigate the implications of a game theoretic approach to the collective decision process. However, attempts to enrich a model often introduce new problems, and this is the case with the Manser-Brown model. The portrayal of the marriage decision, for example, could also describe the purchase decision for a potted plant. The marriage contract includes the consumption and labor supply decision for the duration of the marriage. The marriage contract is then thrown away only when one of the parties receives a better offer (or finds a "healthier" plant). Perhaps a more appropriate representation of the decision process would be a dynamic model with continuous learning and renegotiating. Moreover, the model could be adjusted to avoid the need for a more attractive marriage offer to sever the existing contract. Labor force participation for married women irrespective of the number of children in the household may become a serious option only long after the marriage decision has been made. The additional "costs" imposed on the negotiated items may then destroy the advantage of the union for one or both partie...
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