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The Shift from Equity to Adequacy in School Finance
| Article
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11287 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1993 |
6,859 Words |
| Author
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William H. Clune
William H. Clune is both a professor at the La Follette
Institute of Public Affairs and Voss-Bascom Professor of Law,
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a member of the
management committee of the Consortium for Policy Research on
Education. The positions taken in the article are the author's
and do not necessarily reflect the views of organizations
supporting the research. |
A shift is occurring from equity to adequacy in school finance. This shift is being driven by an emerging consensus that high minimum outcomes should be the orienting goal of both policy and finance. I believe that we are about halfway through that shift, with a major part of the work yet to be done. In leading judicial cases and remedial legislation, we are already at a stage that might be called "equity plus," in which the emerging goal of high minimum educational outcomes has produced modifications in the old equity framework. True adequacy has not been required or implemented on a wide scale, and the underlying knowledge base is weak, but federal compensatory aid is moving in that direction; there are scattered examples at the school level, and we can say more about its cost than one might think. Preliminary evidence suggests that achieving true adequacy will cost a lot of money in low-income districts, require major modifications in school finance philosophy and formulas, and require a new kind of policy and governance capable of producing more cost-effective education.
In this article, I will define equity, adequacy, and equity plus; compare the features of equity plus with a full system of true adequacy; summarize tentative evidence on cost; and discuss implications for policy.
Equity means equal and implies that one district or school receives the same amount as another, usually in the same district or state. A prior generation of school finance litigation was based on the idea that all children in a state should have equal access to educational resources, for example, equal spending or guaranteed tax base. Equity is and was focused on inputs. Courts would typically say that children throughout a state should have the same opportunity to make effective use of educational resources (Edgewood Independent School Dist. v. Kirby, 1989; Helena v. Elementary School Dist. No. 1 vs. State, 1989; Serrano v. Priest, 1971, 1976).
Adequacy means adequate for some purpose, typically student achievement. Despite the obvious focus on outcomes rather than inputs, most previous attempts to define educational adequacy have focused on educational inputs, for example, state certification requirements. A major problem with these input definitions of adequacy has been lack of clear connection between the mandated inputs and desired educational outcomes (McCarthy & Deignan, 1977).
HIGH MINIMUM OUTCOMES: THE NEW GOAL
A social consensus now seems to be
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