Gold Towns and Shark Pools: The Effect of School Finance Reform on Vermont?s School Boards.

Implicit in many calls for fiscal decentralization is the assumption that it will revitalize the power and autonomy of lower levels of the federal system. The empirical strength of this relationship is an important factor in whether one can justify decentralization. The politics of public school finance reform offer an ideal venue to test it. This paper examines the effects of school finance centralization on local school board autonomy by undertaking case studies of 6 schools in Vermont. It concludes that centralization of school finance did not significantly curtail local autonomy, suggesting fiscal decentralization is not necessary to promote local government vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]