Thanks to extraordinary and exponential improvements in data storage and computing capacities, it is now possible to collect, manage, and analyze data in magnitudes and in manners that would have been inconceivable just a short time ago. As the world has developed this remarkable capacity to store and analyze data, so have the world's governments developed large-scale, comprehensive datafiles on tax programs, workforce information, benefit programs, health, and education. Although these data are collected for purely administrative purposes, they represent remarkable new opportunities for expanding our knowledge. We describe some of the benefits and challenges associated with the use of administrative data in education research.

Founded in 1975, the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) has evolved into a professional and academic association representing a variety of disciplines and perspectives on a growing array of education finance and education policy issues. On the occasion of the organization's fortieth anniversary, the authors look at the organization's evolution and consider how its future will be shaped by economic and social trends, as well as the evolution of education finance and policy.

This article contends that a new concept of education finance has emerged in response to substantial alterations in the U.S. education policy environment. The major distinction between modern and old is that the latter was principally concerned with arrangements of inputs in K-12 schooling. The former, modern-era education finance, is concerned with relationships of inputs to schooling outcomes. This modern education finance paradigm provokes a need for (1) research and data extending into the operations of education itself, not just financing; (2) far more fine-grained information than now exists regarding education inputs, throughputs, and outputs; (3) cohesive concepts for linking these data elements with one another to better understand their interactions; (4) an expanded set of outcome measures; (5) information about how previously public sector, dominant-education offerings interact with expanded private market conditions; and (6) better linkage between K-12 and postsecondary data and analyses.