This project represents the beginning of a partnership between the State of Michigan and researchers at the University of Michigan and Michigan State Michigan. The partnership is formalized as the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research (MCER). The goal of MCER is to engage key stakeholders and experts in high quality education research for…

Comprising eleven financial aid programs, the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) provided financial aid to 101,569 students at a cost of $297,589,674 in 2010-11 (Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation [TSAC], 2011). The four largest programs (the HOPE scholarship program, the General Assembly Merit Scholarship program [GAMS], the…

Most policies seeking to improve high school achievement historically either provided incentives for educators or punished students. Since 1991, however, over a dozen states, comprising approximately a quarter of the nation's high school seniors, have implemented broad-based merit scholarship programs that reward students for their high school…

Since its inception in 1993, Georgia's HOPE Scholarship Program has provided thousands of state residents the opportunity to pursue a college education. This study examines the history and recent changes to the merit-based program along with interesting consequences resulting from its implementation. This study demonstrates how the program has…

This study analyzes the policy process through which two states determined education beneficiary programs of newly adopted state lotteries. Tennessee, in 2003, followed the regional pattern of allocating all lottery proceeds to merit-based college scholarships. North Carolina, in 2005, bucked this trend by allotting no lottery revenue for merit…

In the knowledge economy, the journey of education to develop a flexible, knowledgeable, and skilled workforce should begin in pre-school and continue until at least an associate degree--the equivalent of a high school diploma a generation ago--is achieved. A high school diploma is not sufficient to compete in a global economy. The number of…

The SREB Fact Book on Higher Education includes data on the population and economy, enrollment, degrees, student tuition and financial aid, faculty and administrators, revenue and expenditures. With more than 100 tables of detailed information, the Fact Book is one of the nation's most respected and most comprehensive collections of comparative…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the state of Tennessee while also incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. Developed through a process involving elected officials and members of the academic community, the TELS program aims to…

The Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship (KEES) is a broad-based initiative that provides the opportunity for traditional and nontraditional secondary school students and General Educational Development (GED) recipients to earn scholarships that may be used at Kentucky colleges, universities, and selected technical and vocational education…

The Kentucky Education Excellence Scholarship (KEES) is a merit-based scholarship program intended to increase college access, long-term academic commitment, and retention of top students within the state. KEES uses a heavily graduated award structure and both high school grade point average and standardized test scores to establish award amounts.…

Florida's Bright Futures program is one of the nation's largest merit-based scholarship initiatives. This study used high school transcript and college enrollment data to examine the program's impact on high school course-taking patterns, school grades, college entrance exam scores, and rates of college attendance over time. The study indicates…

As a college degree is becoming a necessity for later earning a steady living, tuition rates are rising rapidly. Fortunately, the availability of merit-based scholarships is increasing, yet little research has been done on scholarship-awarding practices. Determining whether high school counselors accurately perceive awarding practices is an…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the state of Tennessee by incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. Developed through a process involving elected officials and members of the academic community, the TELS program aims to address the…

During the last third of the twentieth century, Christian schooling in the United States was typically identified with the growing conservative, evangelical Protestant movement of that time period. After several United States Supreme Court cases had effectively secularized public schooling by the mid-1960s, the American educational landscape was…

The "Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005" created two new grant programs for undergraduates: the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) program and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (National SMART) Grant program. The ACG program is intended to encourage students to take challenging courses in high school and thus…