For over 50 years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Nation's Report Card, has measured student achievement in reading and math across the United States. The recently released 2024 results confirm a long-term crisis in education, with student performance stagnating or declining despite decades of federal spending and…

Objective: This study examines the characteristics, course enrollment patterns, and academic outcomes of students who started their college careers in noncredit courses. Method: Drawing upon a rich dataset that includes transcript and demographic information on both for-credit and noncredit students in multiple institutions, this study explores…

In this article, the authors use original survey data to test the determinants of priority conflict on urban school boards in the United States. The results indicate that school district demographics, including the percentage of English language learners and education spending per pupil, impact the extent to which urban school board members hold…

This paper establishes five new facts about instructional costs in higher education using department-level data from a broad range of institutions. Costs vary widely across fields, ranging from electrical engineering (90% higher than English) to math (25% lower). This pattern is largely explained by differences in class size and faculty pay. Some…

In the last 40 years, college costs have more than doubled. Students pay exorbitant amounts of money to attend college, even going into crushing debt. Meanwhile, universities increase their administrative overhead and other non-instructional costs. "Priced Out: What College Costs America," takes a personalized look into 50 universities…

The "State of Preschool 2022" annual report covers the 2021-2022 school year and is NIEER's 20th report tracking preschool enrollment, funding, and policies state-by-state. This report focuses on the recovery since the 2020-2021 school year, where we are compared to before the pandemic, where we've come over the last two decades, and…

Research Findings: The implementation of the universal two-child policy in China will first affect changes in the country's population, before influencing the scale of development of preschool education to meet the corresponding demand for educational resources. Using data from China's sixth census as the base-period data, this study applied the…

In the United States, researchers have documented persistent racial disparities in school funding for decades. Drawing on evidence from a recent policy change in Pennsylvania, this article contributes to research on the role of state governments in limiting or expanding racial disparities in K-12 education funding by examining differences in the…

Deciding how to spend the nation's education dollars is a tremendous responsibility. It's easy to forget that this responsibility falls primarily to district leaders (sometimes with input from principals). Sometimes those decisions go well and schools beat the odds on student outcomes. Other times, they do not, and student outcomes lag. Sometimes…

The public schools of Arkansas, open enrollment public charter schools, and education service cooperatives annual statistical report (ASR), 2020-2021 actual and 2021-2022 budgeted, is presented here. The rankings of selected items of the public schools, 2020-2021 actual, are also included. The school districts are listed according to Local…

This document records testimony from a hearing before the Committee on Education and Labor that was held to examine ways to improve accountability and prevent fraud in for-profit college conversions. Member statements were provided by: (1) Honorable Robert C. Scott, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor; and (2) Honorable Virginia Foxx,…

Do increased expenditures lead to improvements in international students' outcomes? As state subsidies for public higher education institutions remain low, the reliance on out-of-state tuition from international students underscores their importance. Because international students often pay such higher tuition fees, it is worth studying how such…

U.S. legislators recently brought back thirty-four tax programs from legislative limbo, extending them for three years. This includes the tuition and fee deduction, used by taxpayers to save on college expenses. This regressive tax policy flows heavily towards higher-income levels, with almost a third of the deduction going to those with incomes…

This article provides a systematic decomposition of disparities in school funding by race and ethnicity using two new data resources. First, we use a national district level panel of data from the School Finance Indicators Database to evaluate recent (2012-2017) disparities in school revenue and spending by race in addition to poverty, across and…

Apart from awarding associate degrees, two-year colleges (also referred to as associate colleges and community colleges) may vary distinctly in their disciplinary focus. Certain institutions offer more courses geared toward specific career fields, while other two-year institutions offer courses to prepare students to transfer to four-year…