Abstract: The county-dominated system has forced local governments to be responsible in the education investment, while the new mechanism reform has increased economic incentives for the local government investment in the education sector; both of the two reforms have improved the fund guarantee for rural education and have achieved some results. But in the county-dominated system, local governments are generally prone to the impulse of shirking their responsibilities in education investment; while the new mechanism reform can also bring forward a significant crowding-out effect. Thus, the issue of financial investment initiative in local education has not been completely resolved. Besides, although the two reforms have eliminated the phenomenon of cupped middle part in the financial input for local education, the finally-formed differences in financial investment for local education are also contrary to the principle of fiscal neutrality. Therefore, the important tasks for the future reform of rural education system are as follows: to adjust the local government performance assessment method as soon as possible, to divide clearly the responsibilities of education investment of governments at each level, and to design scientifically the education transfer payment system with regional differences.

Key words: rural education; local financial investment; county-dominated system; new mechanism reform; performance evaluation