This report summarizes the fiscal effects of education choice programs across the United States from an analysis of 48 private education choice programs in 25 states plus D.C. The programs in the analysis include five education savings account programs, 22 school voucher programs, and 21 tax credit scholarship programs. This study estimates the…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

For more than two decades, tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policies have helped American families provide their children with the learning environment that meets their individual needs. Now available in 19 states, nearly 300,000 students nationwide use tax-credit scholarships to attend the school of their family's choice. TCS policies create an…

English learners (ELs) are a fast-growing and diverse student population in the U.S. K-12 public school system. Representing more than 400 languages spoken, EL students bring rich linguistic and cultural traditions to their communities. To better understand education finance equity for EL students in the Southeast, this analysis focuses on nine…

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

Finding funds to build and renovate facilities is a major hurdle for public charter schools because most state laws do not provide charter schools with the full amount of state and local funding that other public schools receive. Although an increasing number of states are passing laws to address charter school facility funding gaps, inequities…

Average American students are seldom aware of child and human rights principles and their impact globally and locally. School counselors are one logical group of school specialists skilled to facilitate school-based, rights-based (i.e., child and human rights) initiatives to promote students' awareness. Moving beyond their professional comfort…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by the president just over six months ago, represents a rare opportunity for governors to leverage federal education funds largely unencumbered by prescriptive federal rules. The bill appropriated $16.2 billion for K-12 education, and Congress astutely set aside $3…

The Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS) was a research and development effort by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to explore the possibility of developing an administrative records survey that would compile compensation and demographic data on all public school teachers in the nation. A pilot survey in 2007 collected data from…

This technical appendix provides additional information about the sample, data, and estimation strategy used for a series of American Educator Panels (AEP) Data Notes published by the RAND Corporation in 2019. The Data Note series is intended to provide brief but incisive analyses of teacher and school leader survey results that may be of…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

This February 2015 report presents an analysis of classroom observation policies and progress in implementation in Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states. It offers a closer look at how states are framing observations, training observers, ensuring observation quality and building a culture of educator support. The report outlines…

Focused on educational quality, innovation and opportunity--both within and outside of the traditional system--ExcelinEd advances a broad range of student-centered policy solutions that are successfully: (1) increasing student learning; (2) Readying graduates for college and career; and (3) Advancing equity. This year's annual report highlights…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…