The Race to the Top fund (RTT) is intended to be a major federal investment in state and local education capacity and systemic education reforms aligned with federal policy priorities. In coming years, questions will be asked about the extent to which investments made through the RTT grant program improve educational productivity and…

A news release by the BC Ministry of Education on December 9, 2011 describes upcoming changes to the funding formula for the 2012-13 Operating Grants and announces increases in CommunityLink funding for 2012-13 and 2013-14. This research report analyzes the potential impact of these changes and compares BC's performance in improving education…

We examine the flow of federal grants-in-aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent roles of state political institutions, political preferences, economic and…

Governor Jerry Brown has called for a major overhaul of California's school finance policies. His proposal for a weighted pupil funding system would simplify the rules that govern the distribution of funds to schools and school districts, while targeting a larger share of available resources to the schools and students with the greatest needs. In…

Superintendent Andres A. Alonso arrived in Baltimore in 2007 with a vision for improving the city's struggling schools. His vision included empowering school leaders and creating accountability for student learning through a series of reforms that center around a new system for giving resources to schools, called Fair Student Funding (FSF). FSF…

The 2009-11 state general fund appropriation is $597.9 million for the eleven campuses, University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), Forest Service and North Dakota University System Office, which is an increase of $153.4 million over the 2007-09 adjusted appropriation, less 07-09 one-time funding. This includes…

By evaluating the impact of policies to financially support university students in Georgia, this article demonstrates the systematic spatial disparities that exist in a context of formally equal competition. The author uses a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative evidence on the entire population of Georgian university applicants in…

This Analysis Brief shows how per-pupil spending varies with student poverty (as measured by the percent of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch) across elementary, middle, and high schools in Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD). The authors have carried out separate analyses that make use of the California Standardized Account…

Most districts are facing severe budgetary constraints, and special education is one area that is feeling the effects. Special education consumes an average of 20%-30% of school district budgets. Pacing fiscal and systemic controls on special-education spending, and examining para professional placements in particular, will lead to better delivery…

This paper analyzed the equity of resources at the elementary school level in Korea using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The data included 2,327 Korean public elementary schools in 101 Local Governments within five Local Educational Offices (LEOs). This study found that schools in low property tax per resident areas receive fewer grants,…

Declining state support for higher education is not unique to Southern New England nor is it a recent phenomenon. Public universities in the United States relied on state and local funding for about half of their revenue in 1980-1981. By 1999-2000 that proportion had dropped to about one-third. With the recession decimating state coffers, the…

This paper presents a case study of two California school districts, San Francisco and Oakland, each of which have implemented their own versions of what is popularly known as a weighted student formula (WSF). One primary goal of the WSF policy is to increase the equity with which resources are distributed to schools. With respect to equity, the…

Given the current economic constraints facing the country, school districts in the U.S. have been pushed to develop annual budgets through a new lens and to accept the reality that budget adoption is a complex, political process. Whether a school district is rich or poor, growing or declining in enrollment, serving a specialized population or…

This article considers the role of higher education in state budgets. It empirically models and tests the balance wheel hypothesis in a robust framework. The balance wheel model posits that in good economic times, higher education is an attractive area for states to fund and tends to be funded at a higher rate than other state budget categories.…

When "crisis" and "extramural funding" are mentioned, most academics think about problems such as the low percentage of proposals funded by federal agencies (now approaching single digits in many fields) or inadequate indirect-cost recovery rates that fail to reimburse universities for all costs of research. These are great problems draining…