School Finance Adequacy: Implications for School Principals

In the standards-based education reforms of today, an important question is how much it will cost for all—or almost all—students to reach state-deter mined proficiency levels ? School finance adequacy seeks to determine that cost. Four models have been developed to estimate the costs of adequacy. Two of them—the professional judgment and the evidence-based models—are designed to specifically link educational strategies that will enable students to meet performance standards with an estimate of the costs of those strate gies. Principals will face growing pressure to implement the models as described by these studies in the future, suggesting they participate in the development of adequacy analyses in their states and school districts.