The Politics and Economics of the Future Financing of Public Education.

Some predictions are offered about the future ability of public education to attract resources. First, measures of how well education has done in the past are reported, then education's performance is compared to that of other public functions, and, finally, an analysis of the values, economic conditions, and political alignments that were associated with these outcomes is presented. Using this information, the author attempts to look into the future of education. Major findings indicate that although education enjoyed remarkable growth from the early 1950s to the late 1960s it is now viewed by many as having declining national importance. This has been brought about by the decline in school enrollments and the growing public support for other public functions, the lack of relationship between expenditures for education and student achievement, and the economic problems and the decline in real growth that now afflict the country. The author suggests that judicial rather than legislative actions will cause any increase in funding for education beyond that suggested by his political analysis. In the future, education's political strength will be least effective at the federal and local levels and most effective at the State level. (Author/DN)