The "new normal" in higher education can mean different things on varied campuses. The new normal, which occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is the current atmosphere across the higher education landscape. As institutions prepare for the 2021-22 academic year, higher education has entered its new normal. While these changes may be…

In 2015, a national student organization called the Black Liberation Collective, composed of local student organizations at multiple institutions, initiated, led protests, and issued demands to institutions across the United States. The student organizations that mobilized occurred at institutions with more resources including higher endowments,…

State and local officials must establish effective and supportive transition policies that recognize an ongoing process and include collaboration across ECE settings and elementary schools. This toolkit offers immediate steps needed to strengthen children's transition this coming year and beyond. [Additional funding for this toolkit from the…

Since the 1960s and before the dramatic announcement of the release of Nelson Mandela on 2 February 1990 (signalling the end of apartheid and the crossing of the proverbial Rubicon (Stone, 2014, p. 3)), the international community assisted the African National Congress (ANC) in its struggle against apartheid and put crucial pressure on the state…

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 decision in "Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees" (AFSCME) (referred to as "Janus" hereafter) prohibited state and local government worker unions from negotiating collective bargaining agreements with fair share fee arrangements. In this report, the authors…

For years, Marjorie Hass, now the president of Rhodes College, was approached by women in higher education looking for advice and support as they took on leadership roles and navigated challenging career paths. Eventually, she began offering online seminars so she could meet in small groups to answer questions and encourage women to develop…

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report is produced annually by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) to broaden understanding of the context and consequences of public policy decisions in each state that contribute to public higher education funding levels and funding distributions across states and…

Thanks to quick actions on the part of federal, state and local leaders, North Carolina's public schools have been able to develop incredible innovations to meet the needs of children and families during COVID-19. As the transition from COVID relief to COVID recovery begins, the Public School Forum of NC recommends several actions that will…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

Levels of governance (the nation, states, and districts), student subgroups (racial and ethnic minoritized and economically disadvantaged students), and types of resources (expenditures, class sizes, and teacher quality) intersect to represent a complex and comprehensive picture of K-12 educational resource inequality. Drawing on multiple sources…

Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) collaborated with Wilder Research to conduct interviews with schools to understand how schools use their existing funding in order to sustain Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) implementation. The findings are presented in this report. Information on MDE's MTSS is included at the end of this report. MDE…

Research shows that a diverse teacher workforce benefits all students -- especially historically underserved students in American education, in particular Black students. With a historic pool of federal education funds now available to help address the effects of the pandemic, school districts and states have a unique window of opportunity to…

In 2017 to 2018, the University of Wisconsin (UW) System undertook a major consolidation, removing its two-year college campuses from a standalone sub-system known as the UW Colleges and merging them with nearby four-year UW institutions. The system-level motivation for doing so, in a state undergoing a demographic shift with an aging population,…

This statistical analysis report presents key findings and other data highlights from School-Level Finance Survey (SLFS) in school years 2015-16 and 2016-17. The report focuses on (1) the completeness and comparability of SLFS data and (2) how the SLFS can be utilized to evaluate differences in resource allocation (as measured by school-level…

Since the 1970s, there have been gains in access to higher education for people who have faced historical discrimination based on race, but disparities in admission persist at the most selective universities and colleges. College graduation rates mirror the same patterns of inequality that college access rates once exhibited. White and Asian…