Arizona’s reversal of fortune to no longer require educational spending to be tracked at the school level: A historical legislative analysis

Abstract

Efforts to provide equitable and adequate resources to schools continue to be debated in state legislatures across the United States. In all cases, these conversations are significantly limited by the publicly available fiscal data. Researchers and policymakers recognize that money is generally allocated to districts that disperse the resources to schools, meaning that spending is more accurately determined at the local level rather than the state level. A historical legislative analysis reveals that in Arizona, policymakers opted to track educational spending at the school level in 1998. However, a decade later in 2008, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed HB2369 that reverted back to district level fiscal reporting. This decision seems counter-intuitive to the growing accountability mentality in many legislatures across the United States. As such, the authors contend that the Arizona decision is unique and provides a context for other state legislatures because fiscal accountability has gone from district level to school level and back to district level reporting.