Does Court-Mandated School Finance Reform Affect Private School Enrollment?

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Several court-mandated public school finance reforms, among them the Serrano cases in California, the Abbott cases in New Jersey, and the Edgewood cases in Texas, have drastically changed the way in which public schools are financed. Much of this litigation has led to more centralized financing mechanisms in an attempt to better equalize funds between richer and poorer school districts. However, while such policies may have equity advantages for students at the bottom, they can have some tricky ramifications for students at the top. I examine the proportion of students enrolled in private schools and how that proportion changes based on school finance litigation status, in an attempt to assess the role of public school finance on parents’ willingness to pay for private education. An increase in private school enrollment following court-mandated public school finance reform suggests that parents are willing to pay much more for schools if they have more control over how that money is spent, and that they are willing to pay less if their money is subsidizing the education of other children.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2011

Author	Gumport, Michelle
Primary advisor	Fitzpatrick, Maria
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	Stanford Department of Economics
Subject	private schools
Subject	school finance litigation
Subject	Serrano
Subject	Proposition 13
Subject	equality
Subject	redistribution
Genre	Thesis

Related item	Title 2011 Award for Excellence in Honors Thesis Presentation
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/jz187mx3206

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Preferred Citation: Gumport, Michelle. (2011). Does Court-Mandated School Finance Reform Affect Private School Enrollment?. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/jz187mx3206

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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