State funding for public higher education institutions is crucial in supporting college access and completion, particularly among students from historically under-represented groups, yet little is known about the mechanisms that states use to allocate funds and how they are affected by financial challenges. This article provides the first detailed…

Prior studies have documented the pattern of decreased state funding for higher education in periods of economic contraction (i.e., the balance wheel phenomenon). This qualitative case study examines how policymakers in California and Texas made decisions about funding higher education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when policymakers faced…

During the Great Recession and in the years that immediately followed, previous research has well-documented that U.S. public school districts receiving larger shares of their funding from state governments experienced larger declines in expenditures per student, as the GR impacted state tax bases more than it impacted local tax bases. Using…

Child Care in State Economies (2024) is a three-part series examining the current status of the paid child care industry in the U.S. The reports provide policymakers and other stakeholders with a detailed update on the status of the paid child care industry following unprecedented disruption during the recent COVID-19 public health pandemic. This…

In the wake of the 2007 housing crash and subsequent economic recession, state legislatures across the country faced substantial declines in revenues, and by 2011, for the first time in more than a decade, average spending on education declined. However, states' budgetary responses to the Great Recession were decidedly uneven, with some making…

Increased state spending and one-time federal pandemic funds have contributed to record K-12 funding levels in recent years. The state of California provides the majority of K-12 funding for the state. California's per pupil spending is slightly above the national average. California's school funding formula allocates additional funding to…

The article is an analysis which focuses on the years after the Great Recession, to show the interplay between federal and state policies. The first year after American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) federal stimulus funds ended, Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, coincided with new federal Pell Grant eligibility restrictions. State appropriations for…

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,…

Since 2008, the Louisiana state legislature has continually defunded public higher education. Decreased state funding has significant implications for public higher education, including decreased student access and college affordability. Overall, state funding for Louisiana higher education has decreased over $700 million resulting in a…

This thesis examines the budget reductions of six high and six low poverty school districts in California and Texas during the Great Recession. While recent studies have supported the positive influence of spending on student outcomes, few have looked at what happens when financial shocks constrain budgets. The study blends the National Center for…

In the decade following the Great Recession, students across the U.S. lost nearly $600 billion from the states' disinvestment in their public schools. Data from 2008-2018 show that, if states had simply maintained their fiscal effort in PK-12 education at pre-Recession levels, public schools would have had over half a trillion dollars more in…

In times of financial crises, it is crucial to understand how district leaders prioritize spending to ensure an adequate and equitable education for all students. This paper examines how districts in Alabama altered spending during the Great Recession. Results demonstrate that expenditure cuts were more intense for high needs student populations,…

State budgets are in trouble due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with tax revenues in freefall and steep increases in spending on unemployment insurance, social-welfare programs, and emergency services. That spells budget trouble for schools, since states contribute about half of all public-school funding nationwide. How might cuts to state education…

This study examines the impact of court-ordered finance reform in New York State resulting from "Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York" on equity of inputs using synthetic controls. The findings herein indicate court mandated education finance reform in New York had little to no impact on equity of educational inputs despite an…

We examine the impact of the Great Recession on public education finance and employment. Five major themes emerge from our work. First, nearly 300,000 school employees lost their jobs. Second, schools that were heavily dependent financially on state governments were particularly vulnerable to the recession. Third, local revenues from the property…