During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funding flowed into the Massachusetts early education and care sector to stabilize providers and preserve affordable access to education and care for families. In the years since, the Massachusetts state government has maintained this heightened level of investment, resulting in significant progress in…

Our updated brief reports that while the number of states allowing FCC participation remained unchanged from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023, there were notable shifts in participation within states. The enrollment of children in FCC settings saw significant increases, with some states experiencing substantial growth. However, concerns regarding the…

Recent reports have highlighted the inequalities that exist in how state and federal funding is allocated to different institution types and the students they serve (Ahlman, 2019; Carnevale et al., 2018; Foster & Fowles, 2018; Mugglestone et al., 2019; Taylor & Cantwell, 2019; Taylor et al., 2020). Because these different types of…

For at least two decades, several California schools have embraced a community schools model that marries schools and community organizations to seamlessly provide a variety of supports to students and families in communities with the highest needs. But when the pandemic hit, those needs multiplied. Members of the California State Board of…

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…

Dual enrollment is expanding in California. Participation in dual enrollment varies across demographic groups and regions. A growing number of high school students are earning associate degrees via dual enrollment. Dual enrollment outcomes vary across demographic groups and geographic regions.California continues to invest in dual enrollment. This…

State takeovers of school districts--a form of political centralization that shifts decision-making power from locally elected leaders to the state--have increased over time, often with the purported goal of improving district financial condition. Takeover has affected millions of students since the first takeover in 1988 and has been more common…

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…

Authorized by the Nebraska Legislature in 2007, the Access College Early (ACE) Scholarship Program pays tuition and mandatory fees for qualified, low-income high school students to enroll in college courses from Nebraska colleges or universities, either through dual enrollment or early enrollment agreements with these institutions. The objective…

The 22nd "State of Preschool" finds that state initiatives propelled early childhood education (ECE) in the United States to historic highs during the 2023-2024 school year. Nationally, preschool recovered from the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, progress has been highly uneven from state to state. While many states…

By their very nature, career and technical education (CTE) programs supported by the "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act," as amended by the "Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act" (Perkins V) span secondary and postsecondary education and strive to reflect state, regional, and…

Objective: This article analyzes the implementation of two state grant programs in Tennessee aimed at improving the quality of in-demand postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) programming at community and technical colleges. We use insights from our findings to propose a conceptual framework for understanding how external funding can…

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the primary gatekeeper to secure financial aid for college. The federal government instituted two changes to the process in 2017, commonly known as "prior-prior year" FAFSA: (1) an earlier start date that lengthens the filing period and (2) the ability to use completed taxes from…

Arizona shifted to using current-year enrollment, instead of prior-year enrollment, as the basis for determining state aid for school districts following the passage of Arizona Education Finance Amendment (AEFA) in 2017. This study examines the short-term effects of AEFA implementation on school inputs--namely, expenditures and district personnel,…

All states have a formula that determines how state funding is distributed to school districts. Most state formulas anticipate or require that school districts raise some funds locally and adjust state allocations based on that anticipated local share of school funding. In theory, state funding formulas attempt to provide school districts with the…