“Modern” Education Finance: How It Differs from the “Old” and the Analytic and Data Collection Changes It Implies

This article contends that a new concept of education finance has emerged in response to substantial alterations in the U.S. education policy environment. The major distinction between modern and old is that the latter was principally concerned with arrangements of inputs in K-12 schooling. The former, modern-era education finance, is concerned with relationships of inputs to schooling outcomes. This modern education finance paradigm provokes a need for (1) research and data extending into the operations of education itself, not just financing; (2) far more fine-grained information than now exists regarding education inputs, throughputs, and outputs; (3) cohesive concepts for linking these data elements with one another to better understand their interactions; (4) an expanded set of outcome measures; (5) information about how previously public sector, dominant-education offerings interact with expanded private market conditions; and (6) better linkage between K-12 and postsecondary data and analyses. © 2006 American Education Finance Association