The Causes of School Finance Inequalities: Serrano and the Case of California

Abstract

Based on a model of school district behavior, this paper investigates the determinants of school revenue and expenditure variation using data for California unified school districts The effects of stratifying the statewide sample by district size and by wealth are considered in detail The hypotheses of the model are consistently supported and prove useful in explaining other wise puzzling results Implications for both the Serrano case and legislative reforms are developed