The Geographic Distribution of Schooling Benefits: Implications for Public School Finance

The proportion of local, state, and federal revenues for blic elementary and secondary schooling has become increasingly weighted toward nonlocal revenue sources. The questions addressed in this article are how much of the cost of public school ing should be financed at the local, state, and federal levels and what are the appropriate decision criteria? To partially answer these questions a school funding model was developed in which revenue sources were aligned with the expected geographical distribution of schooling benefits.