We leverage an obscure set of rules in Texas's school funding formula granting some districts additional revenue as a function of size and sparsity. We use variation from kinks and discontinuities in this formula to ask how districts spend additional discretionary funds, and whether these improve student outcomes. A $1,000 annual increase in…

While the effect of teachers' unions on school districts continues to be debated, the research literature provides few definitive conclusions to guide these discussions. In this article, we examine the relationship between teachers' union contracts and school district efficiency. We define efficiency as the ratio of short-run productivity (student…

Now in its thirteenth year, the "2021 Student Financial Services Benchmarking Report" has become a key component in our efforts to help institutions compare their key financial indicators against national averages and self-selected institutional peer groups. [For the 2020 report, see ED608471.]

There is strong evidence that children who attend high-quality pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs learn skills that benefit them in school and life. The price tag of most private programs puts them out of reach for some families, however. In response, many states and school districts fund pre-K programs to expand opportunities for their youngest…

States and localities throughout the United States are expanding their investments in pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs. Although spending on publicly funded pre-K programs is well documented, relatively less is known about the true cost to deliver the programs, especially considering varying quality standards and accounting for the resources used…

We use estimates across all known "credibly causal" studies to examine the distributions of the causal effects of public K12 school spending on test scores and educational attainment in the United States. Under reasonable assumptions, for each of the 31 included studies, we compute the same parameter estimate. Method of moments estimates…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between funding and the attainment of a high school diploma for students with a disability in the state of Michigan. The high school graduation rate continues to remain stagnate for students with disabilities in the state of Michigan. The research examined the role of school finance and…

Debt will provide economic benefits if it is used for productive things and the debtor have a good plan to repay. Many of the women in the village of Baleturi are in debt, but most of the women who are in debt do not use the money for productive activities. As a result, they decide to take on new debts in order to pay off old debts. The purpose of…

Social research is rich in methods for analysing societal differences. Yet, although qualitative characteristics are a key component to understanding such differences, the analysis of qualitative data remains a major methodological challenge in most social research, particularly when aiming to compare more than a few cases. The article proposes an…

Recent policy proposals call for significant new investments in early care and education (ECE). These policies are designed to reduce the burden of child care costs, support parental employment, and foster child development by increasing access to high-quality care, especially for children in lower-income families. In this paper, we propose and…

The Children's Budget 2022 provides a comprehensive analysis of the share of spending allocated to kids across more than 250 government programs in the federal budget. This report provides an overview of the full report, where analysis found that the share of spending domestically and internationally on children has increased in recent years. [For…

This paper contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intra-state changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends, and demographic changes. Using state-level data from…

This article contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intrastate changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends, and demographic changes. Using state-level data…

Commercial scholarly publishers promote and sell bundles of journals--known as big deals--that provide access to entire collections rather than individual journals. Following this new model, size of serial collections in academic libraries increased almost fivefold from 1986 to 2011. Using data on library subscriptions and references made for a…

Behaviour Hubs is a one-year programme of support (two years for multi-academy trusts [MATs]), available across England to mainstream primary and secondary schools, special schools and alternative provisions (such as pupil referral units). It aims to help senior leaders create the conditions for an effective and sustainable behaviour culture…