In the fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations process, Congress has an opportunity to restore fiscal sanity to federal education spending. President Joe Biden launched the FY 2024 appropriations process recklessly, calling for $90 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Education, a $10.8 billion (13.6 percent) increase from FY 2023.…

Equitable school funding is key to achieving overall educational fairness. Successful state education finance reform advocates must address the causes of funding inequity and create solutions that consider the effects of changes from different perspectives. "Designing Change: A Toolkit for State Education Finance Reform" gives advocates…

"Campus Economics" provides college and university administrators, trustees, and faculty with an essential understanding of how college finances actually work. Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson explain the concepts needed to analyze the pros, the cons, and the trade-offs of difficult decisions, and offer a common language for discussing…

State education finance systems play a fundamental role in providing the resources that schools and districts need to ensure student success. But modernizing and improving these systems is often complicated and can take years. Learning from their efforts to revamp education finance systems, Bellwether has found five common conditions that pave the…

"Making the Grade 2021" analyzes the condition of public school funding in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Using the most recently available data from the 2018-19 school year, the report ranks and grades each state on three measures to answer the key question: How fair is school funding in your state? The three fairness…

Many of the Bureau of Indian Education's (BIE) 183 schools are located in remote tribal lands that faced extraordinary challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to experience ongoing effects. Congress appropriated about $1.5 billion to help BIE and its schools respond to the pandemic. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO)…

The Region 14 Comprehensive Center (R14CC) is one of 20 technical assistance centers supported under the U.S. Department of Education's Comprehensive Centers program from 2019 to 2024. The center works to drive educational change in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas so that every student has the opportunity to thrive. Collaborative, customized,…

As more states adopt universal education savings account (ESA) programs, analysts have declared that the "final frontier" of school choice has been reached. Another choice that parents might want to make and policymakers should support as an intermediate option between private school and homeschooling is partnering with their local…

House Report 116-450 includes a provision for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on Charter Schools Program (CSP) grants, with a particular focus on charter schools that eventually closed or never opened. This report examines the extent to which CSP-recipient schools stayed open or closed compared to non-recipient charter…

This second brief of a three-part series explores the systemic underfunding of HBCUs in Maryland, and their attempts to correct these challenges, first through the courts and then through legislation. Maryland was one of the first states to reach such a monumental agreement in the sustainability of HBCUs. The first brief explored the national…

Historically, private education has been an option mostly for families who could afford the cost or received financial help. Years of research have shown that many families would choose private schools and other educational resources for their children if they did not face insurmountable financial or geographical limitations. Private educational…

From March 2020 through March 2021, three laws providing federal funding for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education were enacted in response to the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic declared by President Trump on March 13, 2020. The second of these laws provided a higher amount of funding than the first, and the third…

"Making the Grade" provides an annual overview of the condition of school finance in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The data in this edition gives a picture of states' investment in their public school systems in the 2019-20 school year, the historic moment when public education, and society at large, experienced the massive…

A portion of state-allocated funding for Texas community colleges has been reserved for the completion of outcome metrics, also known as performance-based funding. Texas community college leaders are faced with the challenges of adapting to increasing pressures from performance-based funding, while also ensuing institutional missions and goals are…

The U.S. Department of Education has projected enrollment declines over the next decade, leading to budget cuts for school districts, which will be particularly impactful in urban and rural areas serving vulnerable students. As federal COVID-19 funds expire, districts will face challenges in cutting costs, potentially leading to layoffs or school…