No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine district level financial data to assess equity across districts, to compare equity benchmarks established in the literature using selected functions from the state's financial database, and to determine the predictive value of those functions to the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests of 1997.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 2001. / Title from title page screen, viewed March 30, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Darryl A. Pifer (chair), Richard Wiggall, Amee D. Adkins, Albert T. Azinger. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-179) and abstract. Also available in print.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the degree to which fiscal disparity in Texas school districts affects debt service, as well as maintenance and operation and local enrichment. This study has four main purposes: to determine whether the poor school districts are exerting more or less effort for debt service, maintenance and operation and total taxation than are the wealthy districts; to determine how the size of Texas school districts is related to district wealth; to determine the number of Texas school districts that do not levy a tax for debt service; and to provide information for persons interested in school finance matters—namely, legislators, educators, students of finance and lay citizens who may or may not be property taxpayers.

The purpose of this study is to make an investigation of the changes that have occurred in the powers of the county board of trustees to change boundary lines of school districts in Texas.

The writer in this study seeks to do two things: (1) to make clear the fundamental principles underlying the relation of the state and the local school officials to the school district in regard to school district consolidation, and (2) to reduce to a systematic organization the principles derived from cases which are applicable to this problem of consolidation of school districts.

The problem of this study was to develop and validate a sound plan of reorganization of the public school districts in Texas. It may best be stated if considered as two subproblems: (l) to develop and validate criteria for reorganization of public school districts in the light of sound guiding principles; and (2) to devise a plan for school district reorganization In Texas in the light of the criteria established.

The problem in this study was to determine the needs of the people of the Northwest District by a social survey, and then, on the basis of the results of this survey and the exploring of established community programs, to construct a possible program by which these community needs could be partially or completely met.

The researcher/writer of this treatise has used qualitatively based data to develop a better understanding of the perceptions of college readiness initiatives in three public school districts in the service area of a community college in South Texas. The researcher has also used these methods to understand the perceptions of participants in a community based parental outreach program about the subject of college readiness. More specifically, through the use interviews with public school district superintendents, focus groups with educational professionals in the corresponding school districts, and similar focus group interviews with the parent/facilitators in the outreach group; critical issues, incidents, and events have been identified to improve and better inform the processes of college readiness initiatives for the college. The end product of this treatise will help both the researcher/practitioner and the leadership of the college improve their educational service to the community, and add new voices to the character of this service. The researcher as an outsider to the language and culture of the region, has also reflected on his positionality and professional growth within this community through these processes. / text

This study examines the effects of educational submarkets -- schools and districts -- on house prices in the Tucson region. The supposition that homebuyers will pay more to live in a better school district or school attendance area is examined, with the quality of education measured by per-student expenditures and academic achievement. Traditional single-market modeling of the housing market finds that education submarkets have a small but significant effect on housing price. Further modeling, taking explicit account of the spatial nature of the housing market, suggests that in the single-market approach, education submarkets act as proxies for other neighborhood effects and variables omitted from the model. Incorporating the unique location coordinates of the properties and allowing marginal attribute- and location-effects to vary across geographic space in a trend surface approach produces more robust model results and allows the educational submarket effects to be isolated. The results suggest that school districts have a small but significant price effect even after a fluid price surface has been developed, but that intra-district variation remains. These price effects have some relationship with district quality as measured by academic achievement, but the housing market does not reward per-student expenditures. At the intra-district level, middle school quality does not appear to have a significant effect on housing price, at least in the Tucson Unified School District. However, the trend surface approach still proves to be a useful methodology for modeling small, local-scale variations. The use of polynomial expansion and spatial- attribute variable interactions is successful: problems of variable omission are diminished, spatially autocorrelated error terms are reduced and removed, effects of multicollinearity are minimized, and the effects of the educational submarkets may be examined in isolation.