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Eric Houck, Ph.D., an associate professor in policy, leadership, and school improvement and a noted authority who examines how educational finance systems can generate inequities, has been elected president of the National Education Finance Academy (NEFA) for the 2023-24 term.
Houck officially became the president of the NEFA at the organization’s 13th annual conference on April 5-8 in Indianapolis. During this conference, Houck, alongside a variety of educators, policymakers, researchers, and students, convened to discuss topics related to the economics of education, education law, educational policy, and K-12 as well as higher education finance.
Prior to becoming president of the NEFA, Houck served as vice president in 2021-22. During this term, he solidified NEFA’s publications work and organized NEFA’s 2023 conference around the idea of “reimagining rights and responsibilities” in education finance.
Houck also served on the NEFA’s Board of Trustees as communications chair and conference planning committee chair.
“NEFA is a home for scholars whose work examines the mechanisms by which resources are generated and distributed to educational institutions,” Houck said. “Our members include lawyers and legal scholars, school leaders and administrators, and policy scholars. This mix of perspectives brings pragmatic, authentic energy to questions of resource allocation and distribution at the state and national levels.”
NEFA is affiliated with two academic journals: the Journal of Education Finance and the Journal of Education Human Resources. As part of those journals, Houck contributes the annual update for North Carolina in the Journal of Education Human Resource’s “State of the States” reports.
“Our partnership with JEHR allows scholars to easily access peer-reviewed, finance-oriented policy updates for states they may be conducting research in.” Houck said. “We can also see trends emerge across states as policies diffuse across the nation.”
In addition to his upcoming term as NEFA president, Houck is preparing for the publication of “Funding Public Schools in the United States, Indian Country, and the US Territories,” a book he co-edited. This publication serves as a second edition of the compendium of school funding mechanisms.
As a supplement to the annual “State of the States” reports, these edited volumes provide comprehensive overviews of each state’s school funding mechanism, with details about assessment and valuation, tax programs, and allocation metrics.
“This is the level of detail that is not always reported on state websites,” Houck said, “and needs experts in school finance to collect and make sense of these multiple overlapping policies that govern education funding.
“This volume expands on the previous edition with updates about COVID funding in each state as well as an expanded scope to cover school funding for Native communities, D.C., and the U.S. Territories,” Houck said. “A companion volume examining higher education funding is expected within the next two years.”
Houck worked with more than 75 authors to produce the book’s 53 chapters, bringing together the nation’s collective school finance expertise while supporting an underserved community.
“The interactive effects of state policies and federal programs in Native nations and for these populations is not well understood in the wider school finance community,” Houck said. “This book continues NEFA’s commitment to examining the equitable distribution of resources across multiple student populations.”
Much of Houck’s research focuses on the mechanisms by which teachers and students are allocated across schools and districts. His article with doctoral alumnus Chris Needham (’22 Ph.D.) on special education funding in North Carolina won the Journal of Education Finance Article of the Year award in 2021.
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