State funding for public higher education institutions is crucial in supporting college access and completion, particularly among students from historically under-represented groups, yet little is known about the mechanisms that states use to allocate funds and how they are affected by financial challenges. This article provides the first detailed…

School funding formulas have been applied across a number of countries for at least the last 50 years. A national funding formula (NFF) was introduced in England in 2018 and aims to provide a platform for fair funding across the country. This study explores the variations in the NFF's high needs block (HNB) funding and examines links with the use…

Improving equity of education funding is a key to addressing social injustices in education. Weighted student funding systems are a relatively novel approach a number of large urban and suburban districts have used to try to improve the equity of school funding. In a weighted student funding (WSF) system, the dollars distributed to schools are…

Determining the level and distribution of special education funding is an ongoing issue. Attempting to meet the extensive range of students' needs, while balancing funding coming from federal, state, and local sources leads to uneven funding burdens and questions about whether all student needs are being met. Traditionally, funding for special…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of social class inequality and education policy through the lens of an analysis of the experiences and effects of state, local, and federal policy meant to engage communities around the use of federal funds to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students. The author intends to…

School funding formulas built upon historically inequitable foundations, such as the property-tax-based system in Texas, warrant continuous monitoring to understand the degree to which they contribute to inequity. Following a review of the political and legal history of the state's school funding formulas and the most recent school finance changes…

This paper analyses the composition, distribution, and history of school funding in Australia through a spatial lens (Soja 2010). We explore multi-scalar school funding policy through three layers of economic maldistribution. We sketch the funding disparities between the three school sectors (public, Catholic, and independent) exposing a spatial…

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…

After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states in the US have reformed their education aid formulas but have still faced many criticisms. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a more equitable and adequate aid formula with tools to win broad support from communities and lawmakers. It develops…

This chapter describes a comprehensive set of best practices for the evaluation of state formula funding models and state higher education funding in general, based on existing practices within the United States. It represents a review of practices that lead to stakeholder engagement as an objective, collaborative process.

Performance-funding for higher education diffused across the U.S. following the Great Recession that led to funding cuts for the system. Postsecondary funding never returned to pre-Recession levels, and public colleges are held to higher expectations even as the funding they might use to meet these expectations has diminished. This is a challenge…

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…

This paper examined how performance-based funding (PBF) policies shape institutional performance and student outcomes for public four-year or above historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). By conducting a systematic review of the literature, the findings expanded on two main areas, as underscored by the pieces reviewed: (a) how the…

This article examines and interrogates the formulas used to determine funding at both the designation and institutional levels for Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Coronavirus…

Performance budgeting strategies have failed to realize the aspirations of their advocates for nearly 50 years. Performance budgeting underperforms because it is too simple a solution for complex problems. It overestimates the power of monetary incentives. Where improved performance can be easily achieved, it spends money where it is not needed.…