Efficient and Equitable Delivery of Education in a District-Based Public School System

在美国大部分地区，公立教育是通过以地区为基础的公立学校系统提供的，在该系统中，一个家庭的居住地决定了其子女有资格上哪所公立学校。这与在其他国家观察到的非地区公立学校系统有很大不同，往往导致大多数家庭将住房/社区和学校质量选择捆绑在一起。此外，众所周知，即使（如加州）每个学生的财政资源基本上是均等的，在这个系统中，各个地区的公立学校质量也经常出现巨大的差异。这些质量差异可能是由于其他因素，如同伴效应，即使在国家资助的系统中，也会在不同地区之间产生巨大差异。除了在法庭和政策圈中经常提出的明显的公平问题外，以地区为基础的学校系统的性质会产生两种不同类型的低效率。第一，这种制度将住房和学校服务的选择捆绑在一起，可能会迫使对教育需求高（低）和对住房需求低（高）的家庭过度消费（消费不足）住房或消费不足（过度消费）教育服务，一些低收入家庭可能会因价格过高而完全失去好的学区。第二，在以地区为基础的系统中，公立学校和私立学校之间的学生类型分布远非均匀，并且可能会根据同伴效应的运作方式，导致学生的低效率混合。因此，本研究计划旨在调查以地区为基础的公立学校系统中固有的低效率和不公平的这些来源。它将教育经济模式的见解融入完善的地方公共财政文献，以产生一个全面的框架，父母可以在其中选择居住地点，将子女送到哪里上学，以及如何在教育问题的选举中投票。此外，它允许各种各样的住房/社区结构和国家学校的财政政策，可以校准到现成的数据。该模型将用于识别和量化以地区为基础的公立学校系统中的效率低下和不公平现象，并区分各种政策选择。这些替代方案包括不同类型的国家援助计划，私立学校代金券，以及更激进的政策，如转向非地区公立学校系统。

AbstractSBR-9905706Public education in most of the United States is provided through district-based public school systems in which a household's residence determines which public school its child is eligible to attend. This differs dramatically from non-district based public school systems observed in other countries and often results in a bundling of housing/neighborhood and school quality choices for most households. Furthermore, as is well-known, dramatic differences in public school qualities across districts often emerge in this system even if (as in California) financial resources per pupil have been largely equalized. These quality differences are likely to be due to other factors such as peer effects which, even in a state financed system, differ dramatically across districts.Aside from the obvious equity concerns often raised in courtrooms and policy circles, the nature of district-based school systems gives rise to two distinct types of inefficiencies. First, the bundling of housing and school service choices entailed in such a system may force households whose demands for education are high (low) and whose demands for housing are low (high) to over-consume (under-consume) housing or alternatively under-consume (over-consume) education services, and some low income households may be completely priced out of good school districts. Second, the distribution of student types across public and private schools in district-based systems is far from uniform and may, depending on how peer effects operate, give rise to inefficient mixing of students.This research program is therefore intended to investigate these sources of inefficiencies and inequities inherent in district-based public school systems. It merges insights from economic models of education into a well-developed local public finance literature to generate a comprehensive framework in which parents choose where to live, where to send their children to school and how to vote in elections over education issues. Furthermore, it allows for a wide variety of housing/neighborhood structures and state school finance policies which can be calibrated to readily available data. This model will be used both to identify and quantify the inefficiencies and inequities in district-based public school systems and to discriminate between various policy alternatives. Such alternatives include different types of state aid programs, private school vouchers, and more radical policies such as a switch to non-district based public school systems.