Homestead exemptions for senior and disabled homeowners disproportionally erode rural tax bases but may still stimulate local educational spending. This article examines one such exemption in Kentucky. Two-stage generalized method of moments is used to estimate the demand for local education spending, then spending in the absence of the exemption…

Connecticut's public K-12 education system relies heavily on local funding, resulting in substantial disparities between affluent districts and low-income districts with a large proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are more costly to educate. Despite recent improvements, the existing state aid formula has been criticized for…

While COVID-19 caused unimaginable disruptions to public education, we saw remarkable examples of innovation and commitment to supporting high school student success. In our New England landscape of learning research, we learned that the boundaries of what it means to "reinvent" high school stretched, and in some systems, the momentum…

Objective: This article analyzes the implementation of two state grant programs in Tennessee aimed at improving the quality of in-demand postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) programming at community and technical colleges. We use insights from our findings to propose a conceptual framework for understanding how external funding can…

In Spain there is an increasing trend towards educational policies allowing completely free choice of schools. The purpose of the review described here was to investigate whether school segregation arising from grant maintenance arrangements is an item taken into account when policies for educational equity are under consideration in Spain. It…

The glass cliff phenomenon (GCP) maintains that women are more likely to lead risky organizations than men. Quantitative measures of risk for assessing a possible GCP exist for leaders in the business sector, but no quantitative measures exist for college or university leadership. This article tests one variable of risk for college and university…

Crowdsourcing is a digital method used in business and academia to engage public participation in the provision of services, ideas, or information. This original case study focuses on examining process-based challenges of combining knowledge and skills of diverse crowdsourcing stakeholders in a network for shared learning. Participatory action…

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship opportunities to their students, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community…

Locally-elected school boards have wide discretion over allocating money among the schools in their district, yet we know relatively little about how they decide "which schools get what." I argue that electoral incentives are one factor that can influence the distribution of resources: board members will direct spending toward schools…

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 study involved an intradistrict equity audit of one mid-Atlantic school district using a Critical Resource Theory lens (Owings, Kaplan, & Whitfield, 2022). This study utilized publicly available school-level expenditure data to determine the allocation and distribution of resources to expose any existing disparities. We used Skrla,…

Background/Context: The business and philanthropic sectors have been a persistent force in shaping U.S. schools. Recently, they have used their resources to advance policies that embody newer principles of industry--reforms that suggest that competition, choice, and deregulation can spur improvement and effectiveness. This has most notably…

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…

The correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement does not just apply to individual students--the concentration of poverty in schools matters, too. Schools with concentrated poverty require more state funding in order to best serve their students. But it is not just about how much; to be equitable, states must spend enough…

Using generalized difference-in-difference and synthetic control modeling, this study estimates the influence of the community-college baccalaureate (CCB) on institutional finance over time and by intensity. Leveraging data spanning 19 years (1999-2017), I find no impact on overall revenue but suggestive evidence of upfront costs and slight…