California state-level policies are responsible for allocating nearly 80 percent of the revenue received by its K-12 school districts. In 2013-14, the state implemented the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which changed the allocation formula from one based primarily on equal revenue per pupil to an equity-focused allocation based primarily…

This paper examines how school districts change teacher salaries in response to large changes in revenue. Using district-level salary schedule data for nearly all California school districts, we analyze two time periods: one with a decrease in funding (2007-08 to 2011-12 marked by the Great Recession) and one with a significant increase in funding…

Background/Context: The business and philanthropic sectors have been a persistent force in shaping U.S. schools. Recently, they have used their resources to advance policies that embody newer principles of industry--reforms that suggest that competition, choice, and deregulation can spur improvement and effectiveness. This has most notably…

The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California's population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast…

Background/Context: Dealing mostly in aggregate statistics that mask important regional variations, scholars often assume that district property taxation and the resource disparities this approach to school funding creates are deeply rooted in the history of American education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article…

In 1923, Los Angeles teachers protested the state's biennial budget, a controversial document from newly elected governor Friend Richardson that significantly cut funding to government agencies. The budget was the culmination of more than a decade of fiscal policy reform that reflected a significant shift in anti-tax sentiment. The expansion of…

Prior studies have documented the pattern of decreased state funding for higher education in periods of economic contraction (i.e., the balance wheel phenomenon). This qualitative case study examines how policymakers in California and Texas made decisions about funding higher education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when policymakers faced…

English language learners (ELs) often attend schools where there are (1) inequitable access to appropriately trained teachers and limited professional development opportunities, (2) inadequate instructional time, and (3) inequitable access to instructional materials and curriculum. These conditions place ELs at a considerable disadvantage.…

The size and cost of US public higher education, funded largely by government, grew continuously for nearly twenty-five years after World War II. In the late 1960s, as the nation's economic growth slowed, the question of who should pay for higher education came under fresh political scrutiny. Decades-old no-tuition policies at the University of…

Contradictory evidence of the relationship between education funding and student achievement could reflect heterogeneous effects by revenue source or student characteristics. This study examines potential heterogeneous effects of a particular type of local revenue--bond funds for capital investments--on achievement by socioeconomic status.…

In the 2013-2014 school year, the state of California implemented a new equity-minded funding system, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). LCFF increased minimum per-pupil funding for educationally underserved students and provided greater autonomy in allocating resources. We use the implementation of LCFF to enrich our understanding of rural…

This study examined evidence of equity for English Learners-one of the three targeted student groups--in the early implementation of California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) across data sets from seven studies. We used social justice inquiry methods and data integration analytic approaches that included purposeful sampling of districts'…

In this brief, we examine an important but obscure form of state spending on K-12 education-state subsidies of school district pension costs. In 2018, this exceeded $19 billion across 23 states. To put that amount into perspective, 2018 federal spending on Title I programs was $15.8 billion. This revenue stream is often ignored in analyses of…

Federal school finance policy over the past 30 years has focused on resource allocation within school districts. Regulations require equal staffing across schools, particularly Title I schools, which are designated based on the percent of low-income students enrolled. The requirement to equalize staffing levels creates a loophole where, even with…

Tiered instructional supports are on a steep growth trajectory in the US and getting underway internationally as a means to providing equitable education to all student groups. In the US, the Department of Education funded the expansion of multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) through school and personnel improvement grants to states. This…