While research has documented outcomes for students served by promise programs, few studies have considered the behavior of institutions themselves in the promise era. A new source of revenue combined with larger and more diverse cohorts is likely to motivate changes in spending and staffing--decisions instrumental to student access and success.…

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified and reported on numerous problems since 2013 at the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), within the Department of the Interior (Interior). During this period, GAO issued 24 reports and testimonies and made 38 recommendations to BIE related to the agency's support and oversight of schools. Key…

Many college students experience mental and behavioral health challenges that can impede them from achieving their education and career attainment goals, especially if they lack access to appropriate care and resources. Responses to the HMS survey highlight a critical need for readily accessible mental health services at community colleges. While…

The appraisal process is used in numerous settings. Any costly expense with a high potential for information asymmetry has an associated appraisal market. Yet, while taxpayers spend more than $182,000, on average, during a child's K-12 education to get that child from kindergarten through 12th grade, no similar appraisal market exists in…

This poll was conducted between August 2-6, 2024 among a sample of 2,252 Adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of Adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. Results based on the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 2.32 percentage…

Four-day school week (4DSW) adoption is an increasingly popular policy, particularly for rural districts that are seeking to reduce educator turnover and district expenditures. Using a staggered treatment event study design, I am among the first to estimate the quasi-experimental effects of 4DSW adoption on teacher turnover, and I am the first to…

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) was the largest onetime federal investment in K-12 schools in history, funneling almost $200 billion to states and school districts. We use novel data from Washington State to investigate the extent to which ESSER funding causally influenced spending on school personnel. We argue…

Policy reform around the globe has increased the autonomy that schools enjoy in spending on resources. This reform assumes that schools face strong incentives to use their resources to maximise pupil attainment and that they know best how to spend their money to achieve this aim. This study provides evidence of the relationship between governance…

Under the current decentralization system in China, individual characteristics of the local political elites and collective characteristics of the standing committees of the local party have an impact on local education fiscal policy. Yet published research on the similarities and differences between the collective influence of the Standing…

In the 2013-2014 school year, the state of California implemented a new equity-minded funding system, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). LCFF increased minimum per-pupil funding for educationally underserved students and provided greater autonomy in allocating resources. We use the implementation of LCFF to enrich our understanding of rural…

Higher education gets a bad rap these days. The public perception is that there is a growing rift between public universities and the elected officials who support them. In "What's Public about Public Higher Ed?," Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee explore the reality of that supposed divide, offering qualitative and quantitative…

This article describes the results of an experiential learning activity conducted at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) and the University of North Florida (UNF). The activity formed the basis for an assignment required for class credit in a course titled "Politics of the Developing Areas" ("Politics of Developing Countries" at UNF). The…

In recent decades, education leaders and researchers have increasingly sought to disaggregate key higher education outcome data--graduation rates, attainment, employment, and income--by race and ethnicity in order to uncover and narrow equity gaps. The same is true, recently, for affordability, especially as it relates to the differential impact…

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is the nation's only source of dedicated federal funding to support the creation, expansion, and replication of public charter schools. Since FY2019, the CSP has been flat funded at $440 million. The CSP amounts to less than 1% of federal spending on K-12 education, however, it has a substantial impact on the…

School funding in Michigan is inadequate and inequitable. Michigan does not provide a sufficient base per-pupil amount, nor does the state properly address the cost of educating students with additional needs, especially students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income students. It would cost $4.5 billion to bring districts to funding…