In the U.S., state politicians directly influence legislation and budget decisions that can substantially affect public education spending and students. Does the political party of elected officials matter for these outcomes? We use a regression discontinuity design to analyze close house and gubernatorial elections from 1982 to 2016 and find that…

Extending and expanding Geiger and Feller's (1995) analysis of increasing dispersion in R&D expenditures during the 1980s, the paper analyzes publication and citation counts as well as R&D expenditures for 194 top producers using Web of Science data. We find high and stable levels of inequality in the 1990s and 2000s, combined with robust…

Recognizing that higher education settings vary considerably, librarians at Gettysburg College sought to better understand textbook spending behaviors and the effects of costs on our students. We adapted the Florida Virtual Campus 2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey to suit the context of our small, private, liberal arts college.…

Instead of asking whether money matters, this paper questions whose money matters in public education. Previous literature on education funding uses an aggregate expenditure per pupil to measure the relationship between education funding and academic performance. Federalism creates mainly three levels of funding sources: federal, state, and local…

Kansas ranks in the top 10 states for graduation rates among students with disabilities. In fact, special education graduation rates in Kansas have improved more than overall graduation rates. And noted earlier in this report, test scores among special education students in Kansas declined just 1% during the pandemic, well below the test score…

As part of the federally-funded grant project "SLIDE: The School Librarian Investigation--Decline or Evolution?" this study analyzed the status of school librarian employment for almost 13,000 U.S public school districts from 2018-19 and 2020-21. The purpose of the study was to learn how the COVID-19 pandemic, which radically disrupted…

Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state-level and national funding and enrollment trends over time. The SHEF report provides the earliest possible review of state funding for higher…

As part of the 2024 supplemental budget, the Washington State Legislature added a requirement that each local education agency (LEA) report to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) by November 1, 2024, on the LEA's expenditures relating to the following items for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years: (1) To what extent the…

The READ Act is the signature literacy legislation in Colorado that prioritizes early literacy by ensuring all students achieve early-grade reading proficiency for later academic success. In 2019, the Colorado General Assembly passed significant revisions to the READ Act in Senate Bill 19-199 (S.B. 19-199), which were signed into law by the…

Conference attendance and presentation are ubiquitous practices across international academic, scientific and professional communities. However, their financial costs and implications have been little studied. Through an empirical analysis of a UK educational conference over three years (N=1,261), this paper examines the financial cost elements of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which students in districts that have moderate or significant levels of capital funding through building and bond funds are placed at a relative resource advantage compared to students in districts with fewer funds from these two sources. Additionally, the study examines the extent to which…

This study investigates the impact of higher education on economic growth and is based on a sample of 18 African economies over the time period 1980-2015. The research makes use of a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) framework to account for potential dynamic and endogenous relationship in modelling of the tertiary education-growth nexus. The…

Purpose: This paper is concerned with the impact of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) on regional productivity in California agriculture. UCCE is responsible for agricultural research and development (R&D), and dissemination of agricultural know-how in the state. Method/methodology/approach: We estimate the effect of…

Almost all states have insurance coverage mandates for childhood autism spectrum disorder treatment, yet little is known about how mandates affect spending and service use. We evaluated a 2011 Kansas law mandating comprehensive coverage of autism spectrum disorder treatments in the State Employee Health Plan. Data were extracted from the Kansas…

This fact sheet reports on education funding in British Columbia (BC). Funding for public education significantly increased in 2017-18 and is projected to continue to increase in line with increasing student enrollment. However, government spending on K-12 education as a proportion of total public spending continues to decline. An increase in…