This Policy Brief begins by reviewing the educational and societal impacts of quality pre-K programs before revealing legislative changes to state pre-K funding in 2017-18. The brief highlights four states and breaks down total pre-K funding for all states, including year-over-year changes.

This Special Report outlines state-level policy components that help ensure work-based learning opportunities for high school students are well-coordinated, broadly accessible, aligned to state or regional workforce demands, and of high quality.

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how…

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and its 16 member states and territories (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawai'i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, U.S. Pacific Territories & Freely Associated States, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) work collaboratively to expand…

This report portrays various performance indicators that are intended to facilitate an assessment of the postsecondary education system in South Dakota. Descriptive statistics are presented for South Dakota and five other comparison states as well as the nation. Comparison states were selected according to the degree of similarity of population…

The Special Education Division of the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) provides many services to Montana schools to assist them in providing a quality education to all students. The programs managed through this division are all aligned with Superintendent Juneau's Graduation Matters Montana initiative. The special education division is…

Maryland's governor, Martin J. O'Malley, didn't get much of his legislative agenda through the General Assembly this year, but he did succeed on one front: preserving enough state aid for the public-university system to stave off a tuition increase for the fourth consecutive year. Like politicians in several states, Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, made…

Financial resources do affect educational quality. When the advantaged have the better-financed school, America will continue to provide unequal education to those who most need what school has to offer. Legislative responses to early litigation and the recent litigation in Montana, Texas, and New Jersey are discussed. (MLW)

Montana, like other States throughout the nation, is trying to improve the quality and effectiveness of education. Currently, education in Montana is prescribed by State statutes and standards for school accreditation, which statutes and standards are also integral to school funding. The State Board, concurring with the Senate, concluded that…