Adequacy Rather Than Equity: A New Solution or a Stalking Horse?

Abstract

This article addresses Clune's adequacy model of school finance from a practitioner's, not an academic's, perspective. It addresses six particular concerns and questions: (1) Is adequacy a new school finance structure, or is it more a federal categorical program? (2) What is the new legal basis, supplanting equal protection, on which an adequacy model is built? (3) The political realities are critical but under examined in a proposal that would require an increase in federal Chapter I spending (currently about$6.3 billion) by $25 billion. (4) Can funds be focused on programs rather than eaten up in compensation increases? (5) Who controls the adequacy model is not decided, raising the concern that this year 's philosopher king could easily become next year's malevolent dictator (6) The interactions between various arenas of policy setting-national, state, district, and school-are neither carefully enough distinguished nor weighed adequately for the shift in authority away from state and district, upward to the federal government and downward to the individual school. Despite these concerns, however, the author strongly endorses the development of an adequacy model for school finance, for it has the potential to put together the policy concerns of adequate resources and program outcome accountability that is currently sorely missing.

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