Call for Papers
NEFA 2024 Conference
Charlotte, NC
April 3-7
Values-in-tension; valuing tension: framing education finance for the next generation
Education finance as a topic of study draws strength from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Economic, legal, and administrative theory have all been profitably used to examine critical questions of revenue generation and concomitant resource allocation and deployment across k12 and higher education systems. Readers of the Journal of Education Finance would not be strangers to research informed by bureaucratic theory, public choice theory, wave models, multiple streams theory, or constitutional originalism, to name a few.
One of the dominant perspectives contributed by policy scholars in the education finance space is that of values-based models, particularly models that highlight values posed in tension with one another. Originating out of policy scholarship (Birkland, 2020), these models have developed over time through school finance textbooks and attendant scholarship (Guthrie, Garms, & Pierce, 1988; Wood, Thomspon & Maiden, 2023; Odden & Picus, 2020; Guthrie, et al, 2006; Rolle & Houck, 2004; Houck, 2015), with the most recent iteration positing dynamic policy systems jostling between four values: equity, efficiency, liberty, and adequacy.
Each of these values has served as a grounding principle for engaged scholarship and policy development over the lest 20 years, in different areas of what Smith & O’Day acknowledge to be a chaotic, fragmented, and multilayered system of education governance across b-K, K-12, and higher education systems (Smith & O’Day, 1991; O’Day & Smith, 2019).
Since rich conversations to define each of these values and resulting analysis of the policies that derive therefrom form the core energy of the engaged academic work of education finance scholars, the National Education Finance Academy invites submission of papers, symposia, and roundtable sessions dedicated to exploring these intersections in a spirit of open and generative dialogue at our 14th annual conference to be held in Charlotte, NC from April 3-7, 2024.
Scholars, policymakers, educators, and legal professionals are invited to visit https://www.nationaledfinance.com/proposals.php to learn more and to submit proposals via our online submission system. The submission window is open and closes on February 9, 2024.