| The Constitution of the Republic of China decrees that all citizens shall have equal opportunity to receive an education. Nevertheless, heavy reliance on local hsien/municipal governments to raise revenues for compulsory education has resulted in wide disparities in the distribution of educational resources throughout Taiwan. Wealthy hsiens and municipalities, for the same percentage of their public expenditures, can invest at a larger absolute level of resources than those who are less wealthy.;The major purpose of this study is to examine the trends in school finance equity for Taiwan's compulsory education system from 1981 through 1990. The study focuses on two dimensions of student equity: horizontal equity and fiscal neutrality. Horizontal equity, based on the assumption that students should receive equal amounts of any educational resources, calls for reducing the disparity in the distribution of educational resources among hsiens/municipalities. Four dispersion measurement methods were used to determine the degree of horizontal equity: the range, the restricted range ratio, the coefficient of variation, and the McLoone Index.;Fiscal neutrality, based on the belief that resources are equitably distributed only if they are independent of local wealth, demands that there be no variation among educational resources as a result of local wealth. Variables of fiscal neutrality were subjected to two bivariate measures of association: the elasticity and the wealth-weighted Gini coefficient.;The investigation for the 1981-1990 time-series of school finance equity concluded that, even though spending in education increased, the current funding mechanism of Taiwan's compulsory education system decreased, both in terms of horizontal equity and fiscal neutrality, with only one notable exception: the equity associated with students in the lower half of the distribution improved over the ten-year period from 1981 through 1990.;By documenting the persistent failure to increase the equity of educational opportunity, this study confirms the need for redesigning the current funding mechanism for Taiwan's compulsory education system and makes policy recommendations to do that. |
