Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students By Bruce D. Baker

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Author: Bruce D. Baker

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In Educational Inequality and School Finance, Bruce D. Baker offers a comprehensive examination of how US public schools receive and spend money. Drawing on extensive longitudinal data and numerous studies of states and districts, he provides a vivid and dismaying portrait of the stagnation of state investment in public education and the continuing challenges of achieving equity and adequacy in school funding. Baker explores school finance, the school and classroom resources derived from school funding, and how and why those resources matter. He provides a critical examination of popular assumptions that undergird the policy discourse around school funding—notably, that money doesn’t matter and that we are spending more and getting less—and shows how these misunderstandings contribute to our reluctance to increase investment in education at a time when the demands on our educational system are rising. Through an introduction to the concepts of adequacy, equity, productivity, and efficiency, Baker shows how these can be used to evaluate policy reforms. He argues that we know a great deal about the role and importance of money in schools, the mechanisms through which money matters for student outcomes, and the trade-offs involved, and he presents a framework for designing and financing an equitable and adequate public education system, with balanced and stable sources of revenue. Educational Inequality and School Finance takes an issue all too often relegated to technical experts and makes it accessible for broader public empowerment and engagement.

At this time of writing, The Ebook Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students has garnered 9 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Ebook is Good TO READ!

Special Edition Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students with FREE MOBI EDITION!

As educators advocating for the needs of ALL students in the public school system, an understanding of school finance, and the embedded racist policies associated, is essential. Many times, this knowledge is out of reach, but Bruce Baker provides an accessible and thoughtful analysis in “Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Schools.” Baker successfully builds public empowerment and engagement by explaining clearly the many issues related to school funding, thereby developing informed citizens who can join the fight for change. Beyond a clear description of school finance and definitions of the related lenses of equity, adequacy, efficiency, and liberty, Baker provides examples to show the interconnectedness of said lenses, and how these interact to provide - or prevent - students from receiving high quality education. Included in the text are in-depth examples, accompanied by graphs, data points, and analysis that help to debunk the myths and misdirections that guide school finance policy and are often used to devalue the public school system. Baker clearly demonstrates that money, most notably in the form of qualified teachers and small class sizes, does matter in providing adequate, equitable, and evolving education to our students. As it costs more to achieve common outcomes in districts with increased poverty levels and high populations of students receiving additional services, these districts require more funding to reach the same outcomes. The need to reassess school funding and the allotment of funds to school districts is evident. In chapter two, Baker discusses the desired policy outcomes of liberty and equality that often operate in tension with one another. He notes that our society must deal openly with our “preferences for liberty versus equality,” (pg. 28-29). This relates closely to Robin DiAngelo’s work on socialization versus individualism in the book, “White Fragility: Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” The ideology of individualism operates on the concept that each of us is unique and not limited by our group memberships, thus our success is a result from our hard work and character, while failure, then, shows evidence that those values are lacking. This is a problem because it prevents us from examining and changing the social structures that do, indeed, keep particular groups of people from achieving the same levels of success. When reflecting on this concept in relation to school finance, it seems our individualism pushes funding reforms and efforts to provide choice, often leading to greater inequality and division within society, as a system of unequal choices is still an unequal system, (pg. 28). If we were to operate through a lens of socialization, we would hopefully be able to put aside our uniqueness and personal desires (for ourselves, our families, and our political agendas) so that we can see the bigger trends and problems our public school system faces. While Baker advocates for school finance reform, he offers guidance for how the reform should proceed differently. Rather than asking if money matters (or if student background matters more), we must shift our interest to determining how money, given our students’ differences, can be used to mitigate disparities resulting from background differences, (pg. 81). He advises that, while the path from empirical evidence to policy design is not a straight one, future school finance reform needs to be informed by empirical research and valid sources, rather than the incomplete versions of school finance that have been used to determine funding in recent years. At the heart of these empirical sources should be an analysis of both input-oriented and outcome-oriented methods, with an emphasis on adequately measuring the full range of outcomes desired. We likely will identify that our preferences for taxation are misaligned with our preference for quality public education, and funding formulas will need to be adjusted accordingly. The idea of outcome measurement raises the question of how ‘outcomes’ are determined and assessed. If the purpose of education is to develop successful democratic citizens, more than reading and math need to be considered in the formulas for determining successful outcomes. While Baker does acknowledge this, he does not provide further exploration into how this might be done. Deborah Meier and Matthew Knoester provide descriptions of seven forms of assessment that are more accurate depictions of what students actually know and contribute to the world in their book, “Beyond Testing: 7 Assessments of Students & Schools More Effective Than Standardized Tests.” As a nation, we are grappling with how to use these assessments to more accurately gauge student and school success, but it seems it is also imperative to determine how to fit these results into a funding formula, so that we are measuring the full desired outcome of public education. An educator striving for social justice and equity, one also notes the importance of measuring outcome success with tools that are designed for all students to demonstrate success. In ““Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Schools,” Bruce Baker provides educators and non-educators alike with the knowledge needed to challenge current school funding policy. The accessibility enables readers to share their new understanding with others, because as he reminds us, knowledge is power. Spreading this particular knowledge develops individuals who can actively and productively engage in change making debates and policy formation. Readers do not finish the book still wondering if money matters, but move forward with an understanding of why it matters and a feeling of empowerment to continue advocating for ALL of America’s students.Note: As a school finance 'beginner,' this book was helpful to further clarify and expand upon ideas introduced in an educational resource course. Understandably, readers of varying prior knowledge may have a different opinion.

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Special Edition Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students with FREE MOBI EDITION Download Now!

Special Edition Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students with FREE MOBI EDITION!

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