I examine whether the impact of the Great Recession on school district spending, the allocation of resources, and student achievement varied depending on the strength of state's teachers' unions. Employing a diff-in-diff-in-diff identification strategy, I find that school districts in states with strong teachers' unions experienced significantly…

State budgets temporarily crashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown, placing education funding at risk. To demonstrate implications for school finance, we show that (1) school districts are racially segregated along class lines; (2) higher-poverty districts receive a greater share of funds from state, as opposed to local sources,…

In 2009, the federal government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to combat the effects of the Great Recession and state revenue shortfalls, directing over $97 billion to school districts. In this chapter, we draw lessons from this distribution of fiscal stimulus funding to inform future federal intervention in school…

Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state-level and national funding and enrollment trends over time. The SHEF report provides the earliest possible review of state funding for higher…

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report is produced annually by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) to broaden understanding of the context and consequences of public policy decisions in each state that contribute to public higher education funding levels and funding distributions across states and…

The coronavirus has created an enormous--and expensive--challenge for elementary and secondary schools, while simultaneously depleting the revenue sources on which public schools depend. During the Great Recession, the federal government filled in a significant share of lost revenue. In contrast, the federal response to date has been limited. If…

The Great Recession was the most severe economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. Using data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), we describe the patterns of math and English language arts (ELA) achievement for students attending schools in communities differentially affected by recession-induced employment…

School is a place where childhood happens. Ohio's public educators teach children of all races and backgrounds basic skills, but also challenge and inspire them to follow their dreams. For many students, school is a safe place to learn, develop and grow. This report describes how the state funds public K-12 education and some key investments…

The nation continues to recover from one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. States were hit hard, incurred significant losses, and many are only just now showing signs of meaningful recovery. Whether it is efforts to bring investments in pre-K back to pre-recession levels or creating new investments, states have indicated, for the…

While the United States was recovering from the recent economic stress caused by the Great Recession, individual state economies were improving at a slow pace. In 2012, state education budgets came to a crossroads, as most states had exhausted their allocations of federal stimulus dollars. Prior editions of this report noted how many states used…

This report examines college and university finances during one of the most turbulent economic periods in decades. The financial ramifications of the 2008 recession were vast, affecting students' ability to pay for college, lawmakers' prioritization of public resources, and the budgetary environment facing higher education leaders. The challenges…

This report presents data from the School District Finance Survey (F-33) of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system for school year (SY) 2010-11, fiscal year 2011 (FY 11). The F-33 survey is a school district-level financial survey that consists of data submitted annually to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the…

For most colleges and universities in the United States, intercollegiate athletics is a losing financial proposition. The vast majority ICA departments do not break even and require subsidization from the institution as a whole. When schools are forced to heavily subsidize athletics, ICA serves to impose an "athletics tax" on other dimensions of…

This "Trends in College Spending" update presents national-level estimates for the "Delta Cost Project" data metrics during the period 2001-11. To accelerate the release of more current trend data, however, this update includes only a brief summary of the financial patterns and trends observed during the decade 2001-11, with…

Cooperatives are systems organized along key principles to balance the distribution of wealth across organizational members. The cooperative movement has an extensive history and has contributed to the design and operation of a large variety of endeavors that seek to maximize returns to a maximum number of stakeholders. While cooperatives are…