The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office and the Board of Governors are pleased to release the "2020-21 Five-Year Capital Outlay Plan for the California Community Colleges." To support community college districts grow and improve their educational facilities, the Facilities Planning Unit of the California Community Colleges…

A state's special education funding structure affects both the level of special education services provided and how equitably these services are distributed across districts. Irrespective of the funding system, districts in almost all states use unrestricted funds to pay for special education services not covered by revenue designated for special…

Educational institutions operate within multiple hierarchical levels with each level typically influencing policies or outcomes at other levels within the hierarchy. For example, decisions made at the state level may influence decisions at the local education agency (LEA) level which may influence decisions at the school building level (as well in…

This statistical report details tax and spending changes proposed by New York State districts. A figure shows budgeted change in per-pupil spending by region for the 2018-19 school year. Statistics in the following categories are provided for all reporting New York districts: (1) Projected Enrollment, 2018-19; (2) Budgeted 2018-19 Spending (totals…

Over the past two decades, education underwent a "big data" revolution as states began tracking individual student performance and interim assessments and educational software allowed for a greater granularity of data on students, teachers, and schools. Despite this plethora of new data, considerable gaps in data on early childhood…

The COVID-19 pandemic has school leaders searching for ways to keep the fiscal ship afloat amid plummeting revenues, unexpected costs, and state and local budget uncertainty. This second of three Quality Counts 2020 installments offers lessons from past economic downturns and survey data capturing district-level views of the current crisis, along…

To address the increased needs of students and schools resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government has enacted a series of three relief and stimulus bills -- the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA), and the American Rescue Plan…

Improving student achievement is a continual focus of educational and political leaders. The strategies used to impact student achievement are varied as are the results. The United States Department of Education provides grant funding to states and local educational agencies with the goal of impacting student achievement through the use of…

In this series of essays, merged institutional and community-representative datasets are analyzed to explore interstate variability in community college expenditure and revenue, education production, and the cost of community college completions. Evidence is presented that factors, such as socioeconomic variables, instructor inputs, size and…

In the wake of COVID-19, school systems face a daunting set of challenges as they plan for the 2020-2021 school year -- including meeting students' increased academic and social-emotional needs, implementing physical distancing requirements, and grappling with significant revenue loss. School systems must prepare for the 2020-2021 school year with…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the percentage of expenditure on public education of a country and the effect that each percentage mark has on the economic growth, and therefore Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. The goal of this paper is to explore how investment in education impacts the economic growth of…

The latest edition of "Quality Counts 2018" takes a detailed look at what is behind this year's school finance grades from the Education Week Research Center, first reported as part of the annual state-by-state ranking of the nation's schools released in January. Under the new "Quality Counts" format, this second of three…

We examined professional development spending among Minnesota school districts and explored: (1) the level and variation in spending among districts; (2) associations between expenditures on professional development and district characteristics, including ethnic divergence between faculty and students; and (3) associations between professional…

A trend among college football programs is to ascend from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). While nine football programs have initiated the transition to the FBS since 2012, the football program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) was the only program from 2005 to 2011 to reclassify from the FCS…

Cities in the United States dramatically expanded spending on public education in the years following World War I, with the average urban school district increasing per pupil expenditures by over 70 percent between 1916 and 1924. We provide the first evaluation of these historically unprecedented investments in public education by compiling a new…