Bruce Baker is Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. His primary areas of research include elementary and secondary education finance, state school finance systems, and educational equity. Specifically, Baker studies costs associated with achieving common outcome goals across children and educational settings with the goal of using cost analysis to guide school funding policies. This work has recently been extended to better understand the full costs of providing equitable, free public 2-year postsecondary education (community college). Baker also studies the intersections between education funding and teacher and administrator labor markets. He is co-creator of the School Finance Indicators Database and author of two recent books from Harvard Education Press: Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students, and School Finance and Education Equity: Lessons from Kansas. He has advised numerous state legislatures and testified on behalf of plaintiff groups across the country regarding equity and adequacy of public school funding.
