Analysts Shelby McNeill and Christopher Candelaria use state-level finance data from the U.S. Census Department covering fiscal years 1987–2007 and a list of SFRs that occurred between 1989–2005, a period also known as the “adequacy era” of finance reforms. They examine the text of legislative statutes that were passed around the same time as—and often because of—the SFRs in order to glean data on local property tax revenues and record changes in state financing schemes intended to fund the proposed increases. They also merge into their dataset state-level population data and student enrollments. Their analysis purposely avoids the Great Recession due to the larger finance changes brought on by that upheaval. There were 24 states that had at least one SFR during the sample period; twenty-six states did not have a reform during this period, and these never-treated states serve as a comparison group. McNeill and Candelaria examine average effects up through ten years post-reform to allow sufficient time for all of the changes to play out. They use an approach similar to difference-in-differences that helps to improve the quality of the match between the treatment and control states before the SFR intervention.