This paper examines the management of secondary schools run by the Franciscan Sisters of St. Anna in Kenya. It begins with a brief history of the Congregation from its foundation in Oudenbosch to the time its mission began in Kenya. The guiding principle for Franciscan Sisters of St Anna schools is the Charism and sound traditions of the…

In an effort to reduce state spending on special education in public schools, New Jersey moved to census-based funding as part of the new school funding formula, the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), adopted in 2008. The census approach funds all districts using the statewide average classification rate and a statewide average "excess…

Our updated brief reports that while the number of states allowing FCC participation remained unchanged from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023, there were notable shifts in participation within states. The enrollment of children in FCC settings saw significant increases, with some states experiencing substantial growth. However, concerns regarding the…

Discover how one public higher education institution was able to succeed despite the many obstacles and challenges that it faced. This is the story of how and why Baruch College of The City University of New York became a "positive outlier," overcoming serious financial constraints, physical space limitations, and other difficulties to…

Arizona shifted to using current-year enrollment, instead of prior-year enrollment, as the basis for determining state aid for school districts following the passage of Arizona Education Finance Amendment (AEFA) in 2017. This study examines the short-term effects of AEFA implementation on school inputs--namely, expenditures and district personnel,…

More than resource allocations, evaluations of funding applications have become central instances for status bestowal in academia. Much attention in past literature has been devoted to grasping the status consequences of prominent funding evaluations. But little attention has been paid to understanding how the status-bestowing momentum of such…

In "The Tyranny of Merit," Michael Sandel argues that the American society is not meritocratic, that belief that it is causes various social harms, and that some of those harms -- in particular, the costs to social solidarity -- would be caused even if society actually were meritocratic. He also explores the way that the structure of…

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the biggest disruption to EU countries' societies and economies, including their education systems, since World War II. Responding to the crisis has forced national governments to increase their spending to keep the economy and public services afloat. This situation has brought about significant opportunities as…

The Michigan Legislature passed legislation in October 2021 to create the Student Opportunity Scholarship Program, which would give thousands of families across the state more spending power to help meet their children's educational needs. This report unpacks this proposed education savings account program and analyzes its potential fiscal impacts.

The last 25 years have seen a dramatic shift in tuition fee policy in England. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the motivations behind policy setting, comparing the pivotal reviews undertaken by Dearing, Browne and Augar. It concludes that four themes may have influenced tuition fee policy making: national politics and…

The State Indicators Database (SID), which is the School Finance Indicators Database's (SFID) primary product, includes approximately 125 variables, but this report focuses on three key school finance measures: fiscal effort, adequacy, and progressivity. This report discusses how states' systems tend to mediate the impact of economic downturns and…

While a substantial body of research exists to demonstrate the benefits that choice policies such as education savings accounts (ESAs) have on various student, family, community, and societal outcomes, the fiscal impact of these policies is also an important part of the debate. This report examines solely the potential fiscal effects of…

Urban communities are typically remarkably diverse in residents' backgrounds, values, and views of the good life. The "community," then, is held together by a staggering number of relationships, compromises, habits, associations, and traditions that have been worked out over time. Dramatic change spurred by philanthropic initiatives can…

This paper is to analyze the 2007 reform of the higher education system in Portugal (RJIES), which ambitioned fundamental changes in the governance of universities, the option given to higher education institutions (HEIs) to be transformed into public foundations being only one element of the reform. Based on desk research, the key elements of the…

Disadvantage in schooling is often constructed as a crisis in need of fixing. Global policy reforms tend to emphasise that solutions for disadvantage often lie beyond the capacity of the state, necessitating private/philanthropic intervention. This paper seeks to contribute to this line of analysis by investigating the rise of philanthropy in…