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…

In many parts of the country, enrollment in traditional public schools has fallen to its lowest point in decades. However, states, cities, and school districts have been slow to respond to the reality of empty desks. This report examines trends in school enrollment, focusing on several of America's most populous cities, as well as the budgetary…

Purpose: To examine how federal/state-level policy guidance and local context have influenced district and school leader responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how these external/internal factors might provide a window into K-12 crisis leadership and policy sensemaking more broadly. Research: Investigating two districts over two years…

Purpose: The socialization literature has identified the importance of school administrator support in physical education teachers' work experiences. The purpose of this study was to understand how principals' own socialization influences their perspectives on and support for physical education. Methods: Data were collected through semistructured…

At their best, K-12 public school systems can be engines of social and economic mobility. Unfortunately, schools in lower-income districts -- whose students have the greatest academic needs -- often receive less funding than their counterparts in more affluent districts. Discussions about closing these funding gaps usually zoom all the way out to…

The purpose of this study is to analyze Illinois school board members' perspectives on SEL, educational equity, and responses to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Survey responses were collected from 61 Illinois school board members in the summer of 2021. The survey included openended questions regarding administrator's opinions about different…

In March 2020, COVID-19 resulted in school closures for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year across the nation. Because of the pandemic predictions regarding the 20202021 school year, concerns regarding curricular offerings and delivery surfaced quickly. A non-experimental quantitative comparative study was conducted in two neighboring…

Research indicates physical education can foster personal and social development. However, few studies have examined teacher beliefs about delivering this aspect of the curriculum. To move research and practice forward, it is important to understand educators' self-efficacy beliefs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has been increasingly emphasized in educational research and practice for promoting children's wellbeing. Perhaps the most well-known SEL framework is the model provided by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). This framework has become the dominant framework informing state SEL…

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…

The 2022 National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) data provide a window into how the landscape of American education has shifted over the past two years in response to COVID-19-related school disruption. Between 2020 and 2022--a period marred not only by the health and safety worries that COVID brought but also by the heated debates about…

Mathematics specialists support the teaching and learning of K-12 mathematics and attend to school-based responsibilities and needs. This study examined the shifts in responsibilities of mathematics specialists during the COVID-19 pandemic to better-understand their current and potential future influence on mathematics teaching. An online survey…

The U.S. Department of Education made recent technical changes reducing eligibility for the Rural and Low-Income School Program. Given smaller budgets and lower economies of scale, rural districts may be less able to absorb short-term funding cuts and experience stronger negative achievement effects. Kansas implemented a state-level finance change…

Drawing from a context of reception framework, this article asks the following questions: How do educators describe issues of safety and belonging in the context of a charged immigration policy climate? What practices have educators developed to support immigrant-origin youth? And, what are the relationships between educators' perceptions of…

How much does spending vary across US public schools? And how much do the schools that low-income students attend spend compared to schools attended by their more advantaged peers? Students are educated in schools, which are frequently segregated by race and socioeconomic status, and spending can vary across schools within the same district. But…