This inspiring account of bipartisan political success delivers an expert breakdown of how and why Kansas--a politically conservative state--was able to craft a stable, balanced, and equitable system of funding for its public schools. Beyond a chronicle of one state's achievements, "School Finance and Education Equity" provides…

State education finance sets the stage for what is possible in schools. Too many state education finance systems today are inequitable, outdated, and inadequate, and there are often significant political barriers to change. Advocates for educational equity can and should play an essential role in shaping the allocation and structure of state…

Both pre-service and practicing educators are entering classrooms with limited preparation for the social landscape, affecting a range of professional considerations such as educational equity, culturally responsive teaching, and effective assessment. In an effort to consider greater impact and meaningful development of teachers for social justice…

The goal of "Navigating Next" is to support school systems by providing concise, prioritized guidance for effectively and successfully completing the 2020-2021 school year while simultaneously planning and preparing for the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Additionally, "Navigating Next" supports districts in determining…

This guidance document was created to help support schools as they begin to formulate their plans for re-entry into the 2020-2021 school year. The purpose of this document is not to prescribe what schools should do, but rather what considerations and discussions should happen in schools as they plan to support their students and communities as…

Throughout the pandemic, the Getting Smart team (which Tom Vander Ark leads as CEO) worked with public school districts in Kansas, Missouri, and Texas, as well as charter schools in six additional states to support hybrid, virtual, and return-to-school strategies and plans. During the year and a half that education systems spent in crisis…

Pennsylvania has historically operated one of the nation's least equitable state school finance systems, and within that system exist some of the nation's most fiscally disadvantaged public school districts. The persistent inequalities of Pennsylvania's school finance system are not entirely a result of simple lack of effort, as policies intended…

Modern educational reform owes much to the legal team and educational leaders who fought to make equal educational opportunity a reality for Black students in the United States of America. Their efforts helped to dismantle American apartheid; a.k.a. Jim Crow, a system of allocating human and civil rights according to assigned or assumed…