Over the past several years, schools across the nation have seen historic declines in student performance in reading, math, and other academic subjects due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. School closures adversely affected student groups at different rates and further exacerbated long-standing learning gaps. There has been a debate among scholars for…

This policy brief discusses "switchers" and "non-switchers" in the context of choice programs with broad eligibility (universal and near-universal choice programs). Switchers are students who would have enrolled in a public school without any financial assistance from a choice program. Non-switchers are students who would have…

Implementation of ESA programs will not be easy. The ESA model is novel and foreign to most state education agencies, which have little to no experience with helping families purchase a wide variety of educational goods and services using government funds. Even if agencies had the relevant experience, ESA programs are complex, involving millions…

Indian Hills Community College had the numbers behind them upon passing a bond measure in November 2021. More than 12,000 voters in 17 Iowa counties gave their approval for a $28 million referendum designated to fund a brand new campus and additional major improvements. The bond, which needed 60% support to pass, cleared that hurdle with more than…

This brief presents the results of a fiscal analysis of the Iowa Education Savings Account Program. The Iowa Education Savings Account Program offers eligible parents the opportunity to receive their children's per-pupil state funding directly into a parent-controlled education savings account (ESA), a fund earmarked for educational expenses. This…

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…

There is a growing acceptance of open access funding models among academic publishers and a growing adoption of open access publishing agreements among academic libraries. In this context, libraries are taking on new roles and new processes to ensure the successful implementation of open access funding initiatives. This article will examine some…

Last summer, the National Education Association (NEA) developed a New Business Item to explore retrenchment: "The NEA shall make a statistical study on the effect of significant faculty retrenchment at community colleges on future faculty cuts" (NBI 78, 2022). ASA Research (ASA) conducted exploratory research in an attempt to identify…

The growth of homeschooling from a somewhat fringe movement during the 1970s and 1980s to a more widespread and socially accepted approach in recent decades has provided a strong foundation of flexible learning models. When Florida's school choice expansion, House Bill 1, was introduced in January 2023, one of its goals was to allow more…

The Iowa Private Academic Library Open Educational Resources (IPAL OER) Project supported 62 open educational resources (OER) projects at 18 private colleges and universities in Iowa. The project impacted 1,800 students during the 2021-2022 academic year. Students saved more than $208,000 on the costs of textbooks. OER adoption led to positive…

The annual community college tuition and fees report provides information about tuition and fees charged at each of Iowa's 15 community colleges. This report also provides trends in tuition and fees among Iowa's community colleges, sources of general operating revenue and comparisons among states and institutions. For fiscal year (FY) 2023,…

Tax increment financing (TIF)--an economic (re)development tool originally designed for urban cities--has been available to rural communities for decades. This is the first study to focus solely on TIF in rural school districts, to examine TIF effects on school districts' property tax base and rates, and to conduct event-study estimations of TIF…

School finance reforms are not well defined and are likely more prevalent than the current literature has documented. Using a Bayesian changepoint estimator, we quantitatively identify the years when state education revenues abruptly increased for each state between 1960 and 2008 and then document the state-specific events that gave rise to these…

The annual community college tuition and fees report provides information about tuition and fees charged at each of Iowa's 15 community colleges. This report also provides trends in tuition and fees among Iowa's community colleges, sources of general operating revenue and comparisons among states and institutions. For fiscal year (FY) 2022,…

School choice critics argue that choice programs drain resources from public schools and therefore harm students who remain in them. Because policymakers are tasked with balancing their states' budgets and ensuring that their public schools meet educational provisions in their states' constitutions, they are concerned with the fiscal effects of…