Robert Berne and Leanna Stiefel

Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University

About the Authors

Robert Berne is Vice President for Academic Development at New York University, where he has been a faculty member since 1976.

He is the co-author of The Measurement of Equity in School Finance (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) and the co-editor of Outcome Equity in Education (Corwin Press, 1994). In the field of public sector financial management, he has co-authored The Financial Analysis of Governments (Prentice-Hall, 1986) and authored The Relationships between Financial Reporting and the Measurement of Financial Condition (Governmental Accounting Standards Board, 1992). In addition, he has published work in numerous journals and testified in school finance court cases.

Dr. Berne served as executive director of the New York State Temporary Commission on New York City School Governance, also known as the Marchi Commission, from 1989 to 1991 and was the director of policy research for New York State's Temporary Commission on the Distribution of School Aid (Salerno Commission) in 1988.

Dr. Berne helped to develop, and is the chairman of, the Steering Committee of the Soros Foundation-funded Institute for Local Government and Public Service. The Institute, located in Budapest, Hungary, supports the fields of local government and governance by assisting organizations in Central and Eastern Europe.

Leanna Stiefel is professor of economics at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University where she directs the public and nonprofit program for M.P.A. students. Her areas of specialty include education finance, public finance and financial management, and applied statistics.

In her education finance research, she focuses on the equity of state and intra-district level finance systems, the efficiency of school-level allocations and budgeting, and public finance issues in K-12 education. She is author of Statistical Analysis for Public and Nonprofit Managers (Praeger, 1990), co-author of The Measurement of Equity in School Finance (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) and writes frequently for journals such as the Journal of Education Finance, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

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