State and district policymakers have difficult decisions ahead in their efforts to balance budgets, maintain school services, and prioritize safety amid the COVID-19 recession. While California's finances are stronger today than after the Great Recession a decade ago, funding for the school system is still volatile, and K-12 schools could face…

On July 1, 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed California's landmark Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law. In addition to providing districts with greater control over how to spend funds, LCFF marked a tremendous opportunity for educational equity. The new funding law gave districts additional resources, called supplemental and concentration…

The completion agenda is the dominant theme in higher education policy in the United States today, and one of the primary strategies advocated in the agenda is performance funding in budgeting for public institutions. Illinois is one example of a state that has attempted to implement performance funding as a means of directing the behavior of…

During the 2004 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 189 (SB189), which established the first system of college vouchers in the United States. The supporters of SB189 hoped that the voucher system, called the College Opportunity Fund (COF), would: 1) stabilize the flow of state funding to higher education; 2)…

In 2015, the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) administered the Digital Instructional Materials Survey regarding state policies and guidelines for the acquisition, vetting, and funding of instructional resources for all 50 states, Guam, and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Based upon this survey,…

In this article, we explore how partisanship affects state higher education policy priorities and expenditures. We assume that party coalitions are heterogeneous and policy preferences/priorities differ via mediating factors. We find that Democratic Party strength positively affects state funding for higher education but that the effect diminishes…

By late 2008, the United States was in the midst of its most severe economic recession since the 1930s, brought on by a collapse in real estate prices and exacerbated by the failure of many large banks and financial institutions. Heeding calls from economists, Congress and the Obama administration passed a historic law in early 2009 to stimulate…

This Evidence Based Education (EBE) request asks for information relating to funding for virtual schools. The EBE Request Desk was asked to provide a scan of states for information on how they fund virtual schools and what the current funding levels are (most current year for which such data is available). This paper provides answers to this…

By late 2008, the United States was in the midst of its most severe economic recession since the 1930s, brought on by a collapse in real estate prices and exacerbated by the failure of many large banks and financial institutions. Heeding calls from economists, Congress and the Obama administration passed a historic law in early 2009 to stimulate…