Bruce Baker is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. From 1997 to 2008 he was a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. He is lead author with Preston Green (Penn State University) and Craig Richards (Teachers College, Columbia University) of Financing Education Systems, a graduate level textbook on school finance policy published by Merrill/Prentice-Hall. Professor Baker has written a multitude of peer reviewed research articles on state school finance policy, teacher labor markets, school leadership labor markets and higher education finance and policy. His recent work has focused on measuring cost variations associated with schooling contexts and student population characteristics, including ways to better design state school finance policies and local district allocation formulas (including Weighted Student Funding) for better meeting the needs of students.

Baker, along with Preston Green of Penn State University are co-authors of the chapter on Conceptions of Equity in the recently released Handbook of Research Education Finance and Policy, and co-authors of the chapter on the Politics of Education Finance in the Handbook of Education Politics and Policy and co-authors of the chapter on School Finance in the Handbook of Education Policy of the American Educational Research Association.

Professor Baker has also consulted for state legislatures, boards of education and other organizations on education policy and school finance issues and has testified in state school finance litigation in Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. He is a member of the Think Tank Review Panel, a group of academic researchers who conduct technical reviews of publicly released think tank reports on education policy issues.

Title(s): Associate Professor

Education: 1997, Doctor of Education Teachers College, Columbia University; 1989, Master of Arts University of Connecticut Department of Educational Psychology; 1987, Bachelor of Arts Lafayette College Biology

Affiliations:

American Education Finance Association

American Educational Research Association

Research interests:

Financing of public and private schools

Economics of education

Education labor markets

Quantitative methods for policy analysis

Recent publications:

Books

Baker, B.D., Green, P.C., Richards, C.E. (2008) Financing Education Systems. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice-Hall, 448 pages

Book Chapters

1.      Baker, B.D., Elmer, D.R. (In Press March 2009) The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform. In C. Lubienski (ed) Yearbook of the Politics in Education Association. Sage Publications.

2.      Baker, B.D., Green, P.C., (In Press January 2009) Separate and Unequal by Design: What’s the Matter with the Rising State Role in Kansas? The RisingStatein Education.Bruce S. Cooper, Lance Fusarelli, Bonnie Fusarelli, Editors. StateUniversityof New YorkPress.

3.      Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (In Press) Conceptions, Measurement and Application of Educational Adequacy Standards. In D.N. Plank (ed) AERA Handbook on Education Policy. New York: Routledge

4.      Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (2008) Politics, Empirical Evidence and Policy Design: The Case of School Finance and the Costs of Educational Adequacy. In B.S. Cooper, L. Fusarelli, J. Cibulka (eds) pp. 311 – 337. Handbook of Education Politics and Policy. New York: Routledge

5.      Green, P.C., Baker, B.D. (2008) The No Child Left Behind Act and the Re-Emergence of Equal Educational Opportunity Litigation, in Our Promise: Achieving Educational Equity for AmericasChildren(M. Dyson & D. Weddle, eds., CarolinaAcademic Press).

6.      Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (2008) Conceptions of Equity and Adequacy in School Finance. In H.F. Ladd and E.B. Fiske (eds) Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy New York: Routledge. pp. 203-221

Journal and Law Review Articles (Last 3 years)

1.       Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (In Press) Equal Educational Opportunity and the Distribution to State Aid to Schools: Can or should racial composition be a factor? Journal of Education Finance

2.       Green, P.C. Oluwole, J., Baker, B.D. (In press) No Child Left Behind: Racial Equal Educational Opportunity through School Finance Litigation. Journal of Gender, Race and Justice

3.       Baker, B.D. (In Press) Evaluating Marginal Costs with School Level Data: Implications for the Design of Weighted Student Allocation Formulas.  Education Policy Analysis Archives

4.        Green, P.C., Baker, B.D., Oluwole, J. (2008) Obtaining racial equal educational opportunity through school finance litigation. Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties IV (2) 283-338

5.       Baker, B.D. (2008) Doing more harm than good? A commentary on the politics of cost adjustments for wage variation in state school finance formulas. Journal of Education Finance 33 (4) 406-440

6.       Morphew, C., Baker, B.D. (2007) On the Utility of National Data for Estimating Generalizable Price and Cost Indices in Higher Education. Journal of Education Finance  33 (1) 20-49

7.       Baker, B.D, Orr, M.T., Young, M.D. (2007) Academic Drift, Institutional Production and Professional Distribution of Graduate Degrees in Educational Administration. Educational Administration Quarterly   43 (3)  279-318

8.       Baker, B.D., Wolf-Wendel, L.E., Twombly, S.B. (2007) Exploring the Faculty Pipeline in Educational Administration: Evidence from the Survey of Earned Doctorates 1990 to 2000. Educational Administration Quarterly43 (2) 189-220

9.       Green, P.C., Baker, B.D., Oluwole, J. (2006) Race Conscious Funding Strategies in School Finance. BostonUniversityPublic Interest Law Journal 16 (1) 39-72LR

10.    Baker, B.D. (2006) Evaluating the Reliability, Validity and Usefulness of Education Cost Studies. Journal of Education Finance 32 (2) 170-201 [i] (GS 9)

11.    Green, P.C., Baker, B.D. (2006) Urban Legends, Desegregation and School Finance: Did Kansas City really prove that money doesn’t matter? MichiganJournal of Race and Law12 (1) 57-105 [LR]

12.    Baker, B.D., Dickerson, J. (2006) CharterSchools, Teacher Labor Market Regulation and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Educational Policy 20 (5) 752-779

13.    Wolf-Wendel, L, Baker, B.D., Twombly, S., Tollefson, N., & Mahlios, M.  (2006) Who’s Teaching the Teachers? Evidence from the National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty and Survey of Earned Doctorates.  American Journal of Education 112 (2) 273-300

Reviews & Editorials

1.       Baker, B.D. (2008) Assessing and Using Educational Data Sources for School and Leadership Research. UCEA Implications Series.  www.ucea.org

2.       Baker, B.D. (2008) Review of the Fordham Institute Report Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy and Portability to OhioSchoolFinance. Education Policy Research Unit. Think Tank Review Project.

3.       Baker, B.D. (2007) Review of the Buckeye Institute Report Shortchanging Disadvantaged Students: An analysis of intra-district spending patterns in Ohio.Education Policy Research Unit. Think Tank Review Project.

4.       Baker, B.D. (2007) Review of The FriedmanFoundationReportSchoolChoice by the Numbers. Education Policy Research Unit. Think Tank Review Project. http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/ttreviews/EPSL-0705-235-EPRU.pdf

5.       Baker, B.D., Rebell, M. (2006) Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Weighted Student Funding is not the 100% Solution. Education Week 11/29/06