Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses

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.

"Hanushek and Lindseth conclusively enlighten policy makers, professors, school administrators, legal and educational researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students of school administration by providing an exhaustive discussion of decades of school funding and the results for student achievement. . . . The authors' experience and expertise in school funding, research, and data analysis and their ideas for the future of funding and accountability make this an absolute must read."

"It is enlightening, maddening, hopeful, frustrating and amazingly informative. . . . The book provides a terrific summary of how the U.S. education system has changed since World War II. It makes a telling argument about how much our well-being depends on our schools. It eviscerates the policymaking that has ruled public education for the last half century. And it buries for all time the notion that getting the courts to fix our schools has any chance of success."---Jay Mathews, Washington Post

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2010"

"Massive 'reforms' have poured billions of dollars into our schools, but we have yet to see results in terms of student achievement. It is time that we step back from the current bureaucratic policies that emphasize central control and regulation. We need to reward success not failure. This is exactly the message of this thoughtful book by Hanushek and Lindseth. It is a message that should be shouted from the rooftops of Washington and every state capital."—William J. Bennett, Claremont Institute, former U.S. Secretary of Education

"Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth do a remarkable job of shedding light on how we fund the education of America's children. In many cases, they find that, despite a tremendous increase in our financial investment in public schools during the last several decades, our students are falling farther behind their peers across the globe. We cannot continue to rely on arguments defending the status quo. School funding and education policy should empower leaders to advance innovative reform and ensure direct accountability for student achievement."—Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida

Hanushek and Lindseth have penned a clear, empirically impressive, and insightful critique of court-driven efforts to improve public schools. This is a book destined to reshape debates about the role judges can and should play in twenty-first-century school reform."—Frederick Hess, author of Common Sense School Reform

"This is a must-read for policymakers, parents, and the public. Too many people fail to understand the seriousness of the educational crises we face. Too many think that tinkering with the current system will be enough. This book not only sets out the dimensions of the problem clearly and forcefully but also provides a path for improvement."—Roy Romer, chairman of Strong Schools America, former Los Angeles school superintendent, and former Colorado governor

"The way we fund schooling in America defies both common sense and fundamental decency. However, as Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses shows, most recent efforts to reform school finance haven't made nearly the difference their proponents promised. For those interested in improving results in public schools, this is a must read. Everyone—including me—will find something to disagree with. But the book is thoughtful, provocative, and helpful in framing the core elements of a more promising approach."—Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust

"This book makes an important contribution to the subjects of school finance and school reform and the litigation surrounding them. The authors, a widely cited academic economist and an experienced lawyer who have both been involved in this litigation in many states, make a good team."—Michael Podgursky, author of Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality