Profile: Bruce D. Baker

Professor

Faculty

Bruce Baker is a 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.

Professional Affiliations:

American Education Finance Association
American Educational Research Association

  • Departments

    Department of Educational Theory, Policy & Administration

  • Education

    1997, Doctor of Education

    Teachers College, Columbia University

    Department of Organization and Leadership

    Dissertation: A Comparison of Statistical and Neural Network Models for Forecasting Educational Spending

    Advisor: Craig E. Richards

     

    1989, Master of Arts

    Universityof Connecticut

    Department of Educational Psychology

    Program in Teaching the Talented

    Advisor: Joseph S. Renzulli

     

    1987, Bachelor of Arts

                Lafayette College

                Biology

  • Publications

    Since 2005

    In Press

    1.       Baker, B.D. (in press) Exploring the Sensitivity of Education Costs to Racial Composition of Missouri School Districts. Peabody Journal of Education (special issue)

    2011

    2.       Fuller, E., Young, M.D., Baker, B.D. (2011) Do Principal Preparation Programs Influence Student Achievement through the Building of Teacher Team Qualifications by the Principal? An Exploratory Analysis. Educational Administration Quarterly

    3.       Baker, B.D., Welner, K. (2011) School Finance and Courts: Does Reform Matter, and How Can We Tell? Teachers College Record 113 (11) p. -

    2010

    4.       Baker, B.D., Punswick, E., Belt, C. (2010) School Leadership Stability, Principal Moves, and Departures: Evidence From Missouri Educational Administration Quarterly 46 (4) 523-55

    5.       Baker, B.D., Welner, K.G. (2010) Premature celebrations: The persistence of inter-district funding disparities. Education Policy Analysis Archives. http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/718/831

    6.       Baker, B.D., Ramsey, M.J. (2010) What we don’t know can’t hurt us? Evaluating the equity consequences of the assumption of uniform distribution of needs in Census Based special education funding. Journal of Education Finance 35 (3) 245-275

    7.       Green, P.C., Oluwole, J., Baker, B.D. (2010) Getting their hands dirty: How Alabama’s public officials may have maintained separate and unequal education. West’s Education Law Reporter 253 (2) 503-520

    2009

    8.       Green, P.C. Oluwole, J., Baker, B.D. (2009) No Child Left Behind: Racial Equal Educational Opportunity through School Finance Litigation. Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 12 (2) 285-310

    9.       Baker, B.D. (2009) Evaluating Marginal Costs with School Level Data: Implications for the Design of Weighted Student Allocation Formulas.  Education Policy Analysis Archives  17 (3)

    10.    Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (2009) Equal Educational Opportunity and the Distribution to State Aid to Schools: Can or should racial composition be a factor? Journal of Education Finance 34 (3) 289-323

    11.    Baker, B.D., Elmer, D.R. (2009) The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform. Educational Policy 23 (1) 66-105[i]

    2008

    12.    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

    13.    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

    2007

    14.    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

    15.    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

    16.    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

    2006

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

    18.    Baker, B.D. (2006) Evaluating the Reliability, Validity and Usefulness of Education Cost Studies. Journal of Education Finance 32 (2) 170-201 [i] (GS 18)

    19.    Green, P.C., Baker, B.D. (2006) Urban Legends, Desegregation and School Finance: Did Kansas City really prove that money doesn’t matter?Michigan Journal of Race and Law 12 (1) 57-105[LR][1]

    20.    Baker, B.D., Dickerson, J. (2006) Charter Schools, Teacher Labor Market Regulation and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Educational Policy20 (5) 752-779 (GS 4)

    21.    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 (GS 7)

    2005

    22.    Baker, B.D., Cooper, B.S. (2005) Do Principals with Stronger Academic Backgrounds Hire Better Teachers? Policy Implications for High Poverty Schools. Educational Administration Quarterly 41 (3) 449-479[2] (GS 11)

    23.    Baker, B.D., Green, P.C. (2005) Tricks of the Trade: Legislative Actions in School Finance that Disadvantage Minorities in the Post-Brown Era American Journal of Education 111 (May) 372-413 (GS 6)

    24.    Baker, B.D.  (2005) The Emerging Shape of Educational Adequacy: From Theoretical Assumptions to Empirical Evidence.  Journal of Education Finance 30 (3) 277-305 (GS 9)

    25.    Green, P.C., Baker, B.D. (2005) Montoy v. Kansas and Racial Disparities in School Funding: Will the Kansas Courts Get it Right this Time?  West’s Education Law Reporter April, 21 681-696

    26.    Baker, B.D. (2005) What will it take to make Kansas School Funding “Cost-Based?” Kansas Policy Review27 (2) 21-30 [i]

    27.    Green, P.C., Baker, B.D. (2005) History of School Finance Reform and Litigation in Kansas. Kansas Policy Review 27 (2) 2-6[i]

  • Research Initiatives

     

    Financing of public and private schools

    Economics of education

    Education labor markets

    Quantitative methods for policy analysis

 

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