The tables have turned on Michigan's public school boards and other school officials. As a result of changes to the state's labor law in 2023, school districts face the risk of losing some authority to determine who should be teaching in their classrooms. Teachers unions are empowered once again to demand districts treat teachers as if they are…

Teach For America (TFA) began in 1990 as an organization purportedly interested in working towards ameliorating a national teacher shortage by sending its corps members into urban and rural schools. In the decades that followed, especially during and immediately following a nationwide onslaught of teacher layoffs instigated by the 2008 Great…

Over the past two years, federal stimulus funding has protected schools from some of the worst effects of the recession. But as federal support wanes and states face looming deficits, deep cuts are becoming unavoidable. School districts will almost certainly be forced to lay off teachers to make ends meet. Given decades of research showing that…

While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions, on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools…

This report serves as a quick reference guide for elected officials to compare key education policies and data in their states to the rest of the nation. The first section highlights major state policies for all 50 states in both table and chart formats (see Summary Charts ). The second section provides key state data, such as per-student spending…

At present, there are no viable models of organizations in decline; all sociological and economic theories deal with growing, expanding organizations. However, as the statistical data from Illinois school districts indicate, declining enrollment and reduction in force are pressing problems. This statistical analysis contains data on population,…