Bruce D. Baker
Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Miami · Co-Director & Creator, School Finance Indicators Database
About
Bruce D. Baker is Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami and co-director and creator of the School Finance Indicators Database. Widely regarded as the nation’s leading scholar on the financing of public elementary and secondary education, he has spent nearly three decades studying how states and nations fund their schools, and whether those systems give children equal and adequate educational opportunity.
Baker has served as an expert witness in school funding litigation in more than a dozen states, in both state and federal courts, including Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. He has advised legislatures and state agencies on funding formula design in states including Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, New York, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. SFID’s annual report, The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems, now in its 8th edition, is a standard national reference.
His influence extends well beyond the United States. Baker is collaborating with the World Bank on a global indicator system for evaluating educational adequacy and on its Global Education Finance reports. He has presented at the UNESCO Global Education Meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, and delivered keynotes in Brasília and at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Baker is author or co-author of six books, including three from Harvard Education Press: Segregation & School Funding (2026, with Matthew Di Carlo), School Finance and Education Equity (2021), and Educational Inequality and School Finance (2018). He has also published nearly 90 peer-reviewed journal and law review articles and influential policy reports for the Albert Shanker Institute, Learning Policy Institute, Economic Policy Institute, and Center for American Progress.
He is a 2024 Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and ranked 41st in the 2026 Education Week/RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. His other honors include the National Education Finance Academy’s Distinguished Research and Practice Award. He is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and a Fellow of the National Education Policy Center, and he serves in an advisory role with Brown’s Promise. Before joining Miami in 2022, he taught at Rutgers University and the University of Kansas. He holds an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Recent Books & Praise
I can hardly think of a bigger gap in the education policy landscape.
Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia
Segregation & School Funding: How States Reinforce Inequality and What to Do About It
Bruce Baker draws on his many years of research to destroy the myth that money in education doesn’t matter, and convincingly argues that equitable and adequate funding are prerequisites for an effective education system.
Helen (Sunny) ladd (back cover notes)
Baker combines historical background, legal analysis, and political and economic contextual data—along with a gleaming wit—to present a thorough, enlightening narrative of Kansas’s K–12 funding journey.
School Finance and Education Equity: Lessons from Kansas
Video & Media
https://kansaspublicradio.org/kpr-news/kpr-presents-bruce-baker
The tricky thing about a smarty pants like Baker is he uses statistics to back up his claims.
Justin Kendall, The Pitch (Kansas City)
