James W. Guthrie

Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy; Director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy

Ph.D., Stanford University, 1968

Research Area

Education Policy, Education Finance, intersection of law and education policy, Resource Allocation in Education, Educational Accountability, and Leadership in Education

Research Interests

Professor Guthrie concentrates on educational policy issues and resource allocation consequences. More specifically, he is concerned with school finance, both K-12 and higher education, legal issues of equity and adequacy, education reform strategies, educational accountability, political processes and education, and theories of education reform.

Professor Guthrie chaired the Consortium on Renewing Education (CORE), a national confederation of academic researchers, business officials, and public leaders concerned with American K-12 education reform. This endeavor was funded by The Ball Foundation of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and resulted in the issuance of the 1998 report, 20/20 Vision: A Strategy for Doubling America's Academic Achievement by the Year 2020. Professor Guthrie served as the chief of staff for the Tennessee Governor's Council on Excellence in Higher Education, an endeavor that was directed at providing a strategic plan for Tennessee to elevate its higher education system into the nation's top-most ranks in the next century. He is engaged in a number of litigation support efforts and analytic projects attempting to define "adequacy" in the financing of America's K-12 public schools.

Professor Guthrie has consulted in the international arena on issues related to strategic planning by nations and the design of education school finance systems in Armenia, Australia, Chile, Guyana, Hong Kong, Romania, and South Africa, and has had extensive experience in consulting for The World Bank, UNESCO, and the Organization of American States. He has been selected to serve on panels of the National Academy of Sciences.

Short Biography

James W. Guthrie is Patricia and Rodes Hart professor of educational leadership and policy, and director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Peabody. He instructs both undergraduate and graduate courses, and conducts research on education policy and finance.

He is founder and chairman of the board of Management Analysis & Planning, Inc. (MAP), a private sector management consulting firm specializing in public finance and litigation support. MAP offices are located in Davis, California.

Previously a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for 27 years, he holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and undertook postdoctoral study in public finance at Harvard. He also was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford Brookes College, Oxford, England, and the Irving R. Melbo Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California.

Professor Guthrie has been a consultant to the governments of Armenia, Australia, Chile, Guyana, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Romania, and South Africa, and has had extensive experience in consulting for The World Bank, UNESCO, and the Organization of American States.

He is the author or co-author of fourteen books, and more than 200 professional and scholarly articles. He is past president of the American Education Finance Association, served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of American Education, published in 2002, and is series editor of the ten-volume Peabody Education Leadership Series. He is principal investigator for the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, a federally funded research center concentrating on educator performance incentives.

Learn More about James W. Guthrie:

Projects | Courses Taught | Selected Publications
Awards | CV | Media Mentions

Selected Publications

Books

Guthrie, James W. and Patrick J. Schuermann. In progress. Successful School Leadership. Allyn & Bacon.

Guthrie, James W., and Christina C. Hart. In press. School Business Administration. Allyn & Bacon.

Guthrie, James W., Matthew G. Springer, R. Anthony Rolle and Eric A. Houck. 2006. Modern Education Finance & Policy. Allyn & Bacon.

Guthrie, James W., ed. 2003. Encyclopedia of Education. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan.

Guthrie, James W., Paul T. Hill, and Lawrence C. Pierce. 1997. Reinventing Public Education. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.

Guthrie, James W., and Rodney J. Reed. 1991. Educational Administration and Policy: Effective Leadership for America’s Schools. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.

Guthrie, James W., and Geraldine Clifford. 1989. Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Guthrie, James W., Walter I. Garms, and Lawrence C. Pierce. 1988. Education Finance and Policy: Enhancing Education Equality, Efficiency, and Liberty. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Guthrie, James W., and Rodney J. Reed. 1986. Educational Administration and Policy: Effective Leadership for America’s Schools. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.

Guthrie, James W., ed. 1980. School Finance Policies and Practices—The 1980s: A Decade of Conflict. American Education Finance Association 1980 Yearbook. Cambridge: Ballinger.

Guthrie, James W., Walter I. Garms, and Lawrence C. Pierce. 1978. School Finance: The Economics and Politics of Public Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.

Guthrie, James W., Lawrence C. Pierce, Walter I. Garms, and Michael W. Kirst. 1975. State School Finance Alternatives: Strategies for Reform. Eugene, OR: Center for Educational Policy and Management, University of Oregon.

Guthrie, James W., and Edward Wynne, eds. 1971. New Models for American Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.

Guthrie, James W., George B. Kliendorfer, Henry M. Levin, and Robert T. Stout. 1971. Schools and Inequality. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1971.

Monographs and Book Chapters

Guthrie, James W., and Matthew G. Springer. In progress. “Administration.” In An American High School: An Encyclopedia, eds. Kathryn Borman, Spencer Cahill, and Bridget Cotner. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.

Guthrie, James W., and Matthew G. Springer. 2007. “Finance Inequality.” In The Praeger Handbook of American High Schools, eds. Kathryn Borman, Spencer Cahill, and Bridget Cotner. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.

Guthrie, James W. 2004. “Twenty-First Century Education Finance: Equity, Adequacy, and the Emerging Challenge of Linking Resources to Performance.” In Money, Politics, and Law: Intersections in the Provision of Educational Opportunity, 2004 Yearbook of the American Education Finance Association. eds. Karen DeMoss and Kenneth Wong. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Guthrie, James W. 2004. “Contracted Solutions to Urban Education Problems.” In Current Issues in Tennessee Higher Education and Public Policy. Nashville, TN: Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

Guthrie, James W., and Jason Walton. 2003. "Market-Based Reform of Education: A Critique." Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management. Brent Davis and John West-Burnham, eds. pp. 274-281. London: Pearson.

Guthrie, James W. 2001. "A New Millennium and a Likely New Era of Education Finance," (with Richard Rothstein) chapter in Education Finance in the New Millennium, 2001 Yearbook. Stephen Chaikind and William J. Fowler, eds. Larchmont, New York: Eye on Education, Inc.

Guthrie, James W. 2001. "Contracted Solutions to Urban Education Problems,"chapter in School Choice or Best Systems, What Improves Education? Margaret C. Wang and Herbert J. Walberg, eds. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Guthrie, James W., and Richard Rothstein. 1999. "Enabling Adequacy to Achieve Reality: Translating Adequacy into State School Finance Arrangements," In Equity and Adequacy, Washington D.C.: Committee on Education Finance, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Guthrie, James W., and Paul T. Hill. 1999. "A New Research Paradigm for Understanding (And Improving) Twenty-First Century Schooling". In Handbook of Research on Educational Administration. 2nd ed, Joseph Murphy and Karen Seashore Louis, eds. American Education Association.

Guthrie, James W., and Julia E. Koppich. 1991. "Ready, Aim, Reform: Building a Model of Education Reform and 'High Politics.'" In Restructuring Schools: An International Perspective on the Movement to Transform the Control and Performance of Schools. eds. Hedley Beare and William Lowe Boyd. Washington, DC: Falmer Press.

Articles / Editorials

Guthrie, James W. "Modern Education Finance: How it Differs from the ‘Old’ and the Analytic and Data Collection Changes it Implies,” Education Finance & Policy, MIT Press, Volume 1, Issue. 1, Winter 2006.

Guthrie, James W. "'For Want of a Nail...'." Education Week. 4 May 2005, p. 48.

Guthrie, James W. "Responding to an NCLB Critic: Use More Than 'Factually Unsupported Assertations'." Education Week. 30 March 2005, Commentary Response.

Guthrie, James W. "An Education Reform Agenda For the Recently Elected: Managerial Misalignments That Maintain Mediocrity." Education Week. 17 November 2004, p. 32.

Guthrie, James W. 2004. "Serrano's Education Finance Successors: Have Policy System Aspirations Outstripped Social Science Answers?"presented at the American Education Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA.

Guthrie, James W., and Matthew G. Springer. 2004. "Returning to Square One: From Plessey to Brown and Back to Plessey." Peabody Journal of Education 79(2).

Guthrie, James W. 2004. "A Discussion on the State of School Finance and Education in the South." The Southern Journal of Teaching and Education 1(2).

Guthrie, James W., and Matthew G. Springer. 2004. "A Nation at Risk Revisited: Did 'Wrong' Reasoning Result in 'Right' Results? At What Cost?" Peabody Journal of Education 79(1); 7-35.

Guthrie, James W. "Computers Idle in Public Schools," USA Today, March 18, 2003.

Guthrie, James W. "Who Holds the Purse Strings?," American School Board Journal, May 2002.

Guthrie, James W. "Constructing New Finance Models that Balance Equity, Adequacy and Efficiency with Responsiveness," Education Commission of the States, 2002.

Guthrie, James W. "Rating (and Berating) The System," Education Week, Vol. XXI, Number 2, September 12, 2001, p. 56.

Guthrie, James W. "Who Will Lead the Public Schools?," The New York Times, January 7, 2001, Education Life Section.

Guthrie, James W. "The 20th Century's Best and Worst Education Ideas," Peabody Reflector, Summer 2000. Reprinted in Early Childhood Education, Twenty-Second Edition, Spring 2001. McGraw-Hill/Dushkin: Guilford, Connecticut

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