According to the UNESCO (2017) definition, open educational resources (OER) are"teaching, learning, or research materials that are in the public domain or released with intellectual property licenses that facilitate the free use, adaptation, and distribution of resources." Because awareness and utilization of OER is sporadic and…

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the organizational structures and resource allocations superintendents in rural Missouri school districts employ to promote college and career readiness. The study sought to identify organizational structures and resource allocations being employed by superintendents in rural Missouri school districts and…

Across the country, districts are choosing to #GoOpen and transitioning to the use of openly licensed educational resources to improve student learning in their schools. Openly licensed educational resources enable districts to reallocate significant funds currently spent on inflexible, static learning materials to resources and activities that…

Across the country, districts are choosing to #GoOpen and transitioning to the use of openly licensed educational resources to improve student learning in their schools. Openly licensed educational resources enable districts to reallocate significant funds currently spent on inflexible, static learning materials to resources and activities that…

For years, the St. Louis school district has experienced the convergence of two trend lines school superintendents hope never to see: rising employee-pension costs and falling student enrollment. Despite years of fully funding its share of the teacher-pension plan, the proportion of the St. Louis district's budget tied up in paying benefits for…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate how school districts, in the state of Missouri, dispersed funds from the American Recovery Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to help drive educational reform, with respect to reading achievement and Response to Intervention strategies. The difference between the American Recovery and Reinvestment…

In the education world, the existence of funding inequities has long been a known fact, but the sources of these inequities have not always been obvious. Typically, local property tax variation has been blamed as the sole, or at least primary, cause of inequalities and called for greater state funding as the solution. In practice, however, it is…

The nation's major city public school districts have substantial construction, renovation, modernization, and deferred maintenance needs because of the age and size of their school buildings, shifting populations, and the need to devote substantial resources to instructional personnel to meet their core academic mission. For instance, the average…

Missouri implemented a new statewide funding formula based on the Outstanding Schools Act in 1993 to increase equity in school finance. This study examined the impacts of the new foundation funding formula on finance equity compared with the selected equity indices including range, restricted range, coefficient of variation, federal range ratio,…

A study analyzed the component parts of existing formulae to distribute federal vocational monies to secondary level programs in Missouri. Among the areas examined were the relative weight of the factors influencing distribution of funds and the extent to which each factor contributes to the final array depicting the total distribution of federal…