The resources that federal financial aid, state financial aid, and federal public benefits programs provide, when they operate effectively, are critical to older students and students with children. This report seeks to shed light on how these programs are functioning by analyzing data and policies across four states--Colorado, Missouri, North…

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship opportunities to their students, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community…

There are nearly 1 million credentials in the United States that students and workers can take advantage of, but how information about these credentials is collected and communicated is oftentimes inconsistent and hard to access. In February, we invited a group of postsecondary and workforce development experts to consider how policymakers can…

Policy and funding influence equitable education for students who are gifted. The concept of equity is examined through variations in policy and in funding at the state, district, and local levels. Challenges and barriers to equity in policy and funding include policy structures, where policy provides guidance without accountability measures, or…

In May 2021, Education Trust, Education Reform Now, and FutureEd published "State Guidance for High-Impact Tutoring" (ED614259) to help states implement successful tutoring programs. This follow-up publication outlines the features of effective and equitable state tutoring initiatives and provides examples of states that show promise in…

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…

Hold-harmless provisions in state aid formulas are meant to restrict declines in revenues for school districts. They may take several forms, including limits on the changes in state aid from year to year, supplemental funding for districts with declining enrollment, alternatives for calculating the state aid amount, or use of past enrollments in…

This report explains how State Entity (SE) Program grantees are using or proposed to use the technical assistance (TA) set-aside portion of their Charter School Programs (CSP) funds for these activities. This report also describes SE activities to ensure subgrantees are equipped to meet the needs of all students, and specifically students with…

This paper reports on an analysis, using a comparative case study design, of the degree to which policy actors use evidence in designing performance-funding policies in Colorado and Texas. The analysis reveals that features of demanders of information--including their prior exposure to research, their attitudes toward evidence, and, in the case of…

Charter schools began in the 1990s as an experimental alternative to public schools. Today they are a multi-billion dollar sector composed of both nonprofit and for-profit corporations that embrace the philosophy of the marketplace. Supporters of charters see school failure as a natural feature of the model. They argue that schools do not fail at…

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way that families and policymakers view K-12 education. Learning loss is having an outsized impact on students who were furthest from opportunity before the pandemic. And families are increasingly looking for new educational options for their children. For decades, access to educational options…

The research described in this paper expands on attempts to conceptualize, measure, and evaluate the degree to which states have aligned their finance systems with their respective accountability policies. State education finance and accountability policies serve as levers to provide equal educational opportunities for all students--scholars have…

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and…

There were a number of historic public charter school policy wins across the country in 2017. Kentucky became the 44th state (along with the District of Columbia) to enact a charter school law. Colorado and Florida provided charter school students with unprecedented access to locally raised dollars for facilities. Tennessee and Texas created new…

Change swept throughout the country with the 2018 elections, bringing 20 new governors into office. Whether returning or starting their first term, governors are taking the opportunity in their State of the State addresses to highlight achievements and outline plans for the future. Every governor who has given an address has mentioned an…