Sizeable achievement differences by race appear in early grades, but substantial uncertainty exists about the impact of school quality on the black-white achievement gap and particularly about its evolution across different parts of the achievement distribution. Texas administrative data show...

The leading school reform policy in the United States revolves around strong accountability of schools with consequences for performance. The federal government's involvement through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reinforces the prior movement of many states toward policies based on...

The dramatic change in aggregate fiscal policy in recent years has contributed to a shift from process rules to allocation rules in federal budgeting. Although the allocation rules inherent in formula budgeting seem to offer fairness in times of fiscal constraint, they actually impose arbitrary...

The conventional wisdom about public schools is that they face serious problems in terms of performance and that improving schools requires additional money. However, the available evidence suggests that there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such...