As populist forces stretch apart higher education and government, colleges lobby in measurable ways to secure scarce funding and respond to accountability regulations. The non-profit and corporate lobbying literature provides a basis of comparison to ask if colleges lobby like corporations, which have been successful lobbyists under challenging…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

This report explains how State Entity (SE) Program grantees are using or proposed to use the technical assistance (TA) set-aside portion of their Charter School Programs (CSP) funds for these activities. This report also describes SE activities to ensure subgrantees are equipped to meet the needs of all students, and specifically students with…

The research described in this paper expands on attempts to conceptualize, measure, and evaluate the degree to which states have aligned their finance systems with their respective accountability policies. State education finance and accountability policies serve as levers to provide equal educational opportunities for all students--scholars have…

New York State's system of public elementary and secondary schools is in steep decline, but it is salvageable. The roots of its problems pre-date the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, but the system's response to that challenge accelerated discontent with the schools and harmed students. The damage of those years will not be undone if…

This policy brief is part of a larger research report, "Making ESSA's Equity Promise Real: State Strategies to Close the Opportunity Gap," that describes how states are using opportunities in ESSA [Every Student Succeeds Act] to better support historically underserved students through the thoughtful selection of specific equity measures…

While new teachers bring energy and passion into their classrooms and schools, they can find themselves incredibly challenged as they learn how to plan and implement lessons, collect, and use data to inform their instructional practices, build relationships with students and families, manage classroom behavior, and meet the varying academic,…

This paper argues for a radical restructuring of education for grades 11-14--by erasing the arbitrary dividing line between high school and college--to open opportunities for the learners the current systems leave behind. The authors make the case for an entirely new type of institution--neither high school nor college--designed specifically to…

This article identifies a set of location incentives created by New York's charter school financing and accountability provisions. We then use regression models to examine the location of charter schools across and within districts. We find that charter schools (1) are significantly more likely to locate in districts with high operating expenses…

The Career and Technical Education (CTE) playbook series has explored strategies and processes states can use to strengthen CTE program quality and provide students with pathways to postsecondary credentialing and middle- and higher wage career opportunities. In the first three CTE Playbooks, ExcelinEd provided a high-level view of how states can…

Since 2004, the Chinese government has planted Confucius Institutes that offer Chinese language and culture courses at colleges and universities around the world--including more than 100 in the United States. These Institutes avoid Chinese political history and human rights abuses, portray Taiwan and Tibet as undisputed territories of China, and…

One of the key priorities for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is alignment and conformity across different federal and state systems. ESSA gives states the flexibility to hold schools accountable, measure student outcomes, and provide supports and technical assistance in a way that is aligned with their own priorities. States are encouraged…

Building on the resources offered in the first volume of this series, this second volume offers governance members, leaders, and other academics valuable insights into the governance process in higher education. In a chapter drawn from his keynote address at the March 2015 SUNY Voices conference, Steven Bahls, president of Augustana College,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate New York State school superintendent job satisfaction and the potential contributing factors to their job satisfaction in an era of reduced resources and increased accountability. This survey was sent to 684 superintendents throughout New York State and completed by 280 superintendents. Sharp, Malone…

The conceptualization and measurement of education finance equity and adequacy has engaged researchers for more than three decades. At the same time, calls for increased academic accountability and higher student achievement in K-12 public education have reached new levels at both the national and state levels. Aligning these represents an…