This Policy Snapshot provides examples of legislation in 13 states that have proposed or enacted legislation addressing the following principles of K-12 funding models: attendance and enrollment, revenue, and equity-based initiatives. All 50 states allocate K-12 funding in different ways. Refer to this two-page reference guide, which defines and…

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…

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)…

Milwaukee's system of K-12 public education is distinct from many other urban school systems in the degree of educational choices offered to students and their families. This range of options has fostered intense competition among Milwaukee's K-12 schools over the past decade. While enrollment in traditional Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has…

In recent years, competition for K-12 enrollment in Wisconsin among traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools using the state's voucher programs has intensified. Because elementary and secondary education finance in the state primarily is driven by enrollment, this has presented increasingly difficult fiscal conditions for…

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED-…

The nation's major city public school districts have substantial construction, renovation, modernization, and deferred maintenance needs because of the age and size of their school buildings, shifting populations, and the need to devote substantial resources to instructional personnel to meet their core academic mission. For instance, the average…

The present monograph has been "written with a view" to presenting in a simple and concise manner to the general educational public the most significant conclusions reached in the course of an extensive study of school finance, continued for several years and covering a number of states. Some of the data have been taken from bulletins of…

While much attention has been paid to educational reform or restructuring efforts to improve the nation's schools, the fiscal aspects of reform have received little attention. The Education Commission of the States studied 20 school districts in 6 states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, and South Carolina) to determine what impact…