The expert contributors to this volume assess recent court actions in school adequacy lawsuits and their impact on student outcomes. They show that simply throwing more resources at the problem has not brought about a solution and call for changes centered around accountability, incentives, and more informed parents and policymakers.

This inspiring account of bipartisan political success delivers an expert breakdown of how and why Kansas—a politically conservative state—was able to craft a stable, balanced, and equitable system of funding for its public schools. Beyond a chronicle of one state’s achievements, School Finance and Education Equity provides invaluable policy guidance and lays out a blueprint that other states can use to strengthen their own public education systems. Readers are given an insider’s tour of the Kansas story by Bruce D. Baker, an academic researcher and expert witness in school finance litigation. With more than two decades of involvement with the state, Baker combines historical background, legal analysis, and political and economic contextual data—along with a gleaming wit—to present a thorough, enlightening narrative of Kansas’s K–12 funding journey. As Baker points out, other states can find much to learn here. He shows that, when it comes to school finance, Kansas serves as an exemplar in aligning resources to meet the promises of its constitution. State leaders rejected the pervasive notion that money doesn’t matter in education, and they gathered the data to prove that it does. Baker emphasizes that this kind of slow and steady success hinges on the ability of stakeholders to remain involved over time. Continuity is vitally important. Baker’s account highlights how persistence can overcome opposition, continuity can aid reform, and incremental gains can lead to big change. In an era of national ideological polarization and political and economic volatility, the lessons from Kansas are especially illuminating.

Improving public schools through performance-based funding Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public-school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this book, Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth trace the history of reform efforts and conclude that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Instead, Hanushek and Lindseth propose a new approach: a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising student achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions about how to run their schools, ultimately leading to improved student performance. Hanushek and Lindseth have been important participants in the school funding debate for three decades. Here, they draw on their experience, as well as the best available research and data, to show why improving schools will require overhauling the way financing, incentives, and accountability work in public education.