In most states across the country, public K-12 enrollment is declining. This is a decade-long, national trend that accelerated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and is projected to continue. Although enrollment decline varies substantially among and within states, many states have put temporary or permanent policies in place to address the…

What can the federal government do to help ensure that the public schools attended by children living in poverty have enough resources to serve their students? In this brief, we describe existing federal efforts to support education spending in high-poverty districts, discuss their limitations, and suggest alternative approaches for federal…

Over the past four years, Florida has seen tremendous growth in the amount of public funds being spent on private education. This report finds that in 2022-23, an estimated $1.3 billion in funding will be redirected from public school districts to private education, representing 10% of state K-12 education funds allocated through the Florida…

The State of the States in Gifted Education report is a biennial report that has been published by the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted since 1985. The current study examines financial data from these reports relating to the funding of gifted and talented education (GATE) by state-level funding authorities descriptively. We…

Policymakers commonly assert that Broad Access Institutions (BAIs) cannot be "all things to all people" when cutting their funding. BAIs were founded with comprehensive missions to generate postsecondary access through low barriers for admission and affordable tuition and promote student-centeredness through institutional foci on…

The Trump administration may push for a shift away from the current formula-driven federal K-12 education funding toward more flexible block grants -- part of a broader effort to significantly scale back the U.S. Department of Education and direct more education policy decision-making to the states. If Congress authorizes this new flexibility,…

This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function modeling on several states and in an earlier version of…

States are increasingly adopting changes to K-12 funding systems in order to promote and encourage student engagement in secondary-level career and technical education (CTE). Two of the most prevalent reforms include: a) establishing tiered weights for CTE in school funding formulas based on the connection between a program of study and workforce…

As current trends across the country indicate widespread declining student enrollment and attendance, EdChoice is interested in conducting an evaluation of state-level school funding and enrollment policies that protect public schools against reduced funding due to declining enrollment. To support this effort, EdChoice enlisted Hanover to conduct…

At their best, K-12 public school systems can be engines of social and economic mobility. Unfortunately, schools in lower-income districts -- whose students have the greatest academic needs -- often receive less funding than their counterparts in more affluent districts. Discussions about closing these funding gaps usually zoom all the way out to…

In 2022, Tennessee overhauled its education funding formula to improve outcomes for the 1 million students in the state. The Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act (TISA) was designed to simplify the existing funding formula and more equitably allocate resources to schools. Bellwether's case study, "After the Policy Win: First-Year…

In 2013, California enacted an ambitious school funding reform--the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The LCFF fundamentally overhauled the state's prior K-12 education finance system, which studies found to be inequitable, irrational, and highly centralized. More than a decade after its enactment, a growing body of research indicates the LCFF…

Across all 50 states, there are different ways in which states allocate K-12 and special education funding to districts. Education Commission of the States has collected information on states' primary funding models, base per-student funding amounts, student attendance count methods, and funding for special education, English language learners,…

California approved a massive overhaul of its byzantine and unequal school finance system when the state Legislature passed and Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013. LCFF featured a new state finance model, but it was much more than a change in finance distribution formulas. It also provided districts with…

This dissertation studies opportunity and equity in college admissions, as well as how higher education affects labor market outcomes. The first two chapters explore how state policies affect enrollment at public institutions of higher education. The third chapter characterizes outcomes in a labor market in which agents with different skill levels…