In most schools, the end user of education products and programs--the teacher--has little or no control over what gets purchased; education products and programs are bought for teachers by school and district leaders. This top-down purchasing system creates three hurdles to effective education procurement: (1) half-baked implementation of new…

Building on more than a decade of experience working with a diverse array of school systems, our extensive collection of district data, and published research on what works best for students, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) has developed a diagnostic that can guide district leaders from assessment to strategic planning. The Strategic System…

The "2018 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments" provides the most comprehensive analysis of endowment investment returns, asset allocations, and governance policies and practices at hundreds of U.S. higher education institutions and affiliated foundations. The report provides extensive data to help institutions evaluate their investment…

This article provides an analysis of published writing on amenities in higher education with the goal of bringing order to the voluminous information and helping to advance research. It examines over 40 articles and books to answer four interrelated questions: 1) How are amenities defined in the context of higher education? 2) How are amenities…

Academic libraries use two common methods to reach first-year students: outreach activities and library instruction. The purpose of this study was to discover if curriculum mapping techniques commonly used in library instruction could be applied to outreach to explore the synergies and differences between programs. The project demonstrated that…

Congress amended and extended the "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education" ("Perkins IV") in 2018 with passage of the "Strengthening Career and Technical Education Act for the 21st Century" ("Perkins V"); the law became effective on July 1, 2019. "Perkins V" increases federal funding for…

Across all 50 states, there are different ways in which states allocate K-12 funding to districts. This document provides information on what type of funding mechanism is used by state. To classify funding mechanisms that appear in state statute or in regulations, Education Commission of the States created definitions for the terms used on this…

A combination of mathematical and statistical modelling techniques may be used to analyse student dropout behaviour. The aim of this study is to combine Survival Analysis and Analytic Hierarchy Process methodologies when identifying students at-risk of dropping out. This combination favours the institutional understanding of dropout as a dynamic…

Given that education infrastructure has been a crucial element of the infrastructural power of the welfare state, surprisingly little is known about how spatial disparities in school infrastructure have been governed. While emphasis has recently been placed on the role of numbers in governing the education system, there have been contradictory…

Deciding how to spend the nation's education dollars is a tremendous responsibility. It's easy to forget that this responsibility falls primarily to district leaders (sometimes with input from principals). Sometimes those decisions go well and schools beat the odds on student outcomes. Other times, they do not, and student outcomes lag. Sometimes…

School and district leaders make annual decisions about investing their budgets in a multitude of educational programs. Policy directives set expectations for investing in programs that show evidence of improving student outcomes. However, evaluating many simultaneously-implemented programs under typical school operating conditions is challenging.…

Many children in GPE partner countries remain out of school or are unable to complete even primary education. This working paper aims to bring attention to the ongoing challenges of reaching universal access to education and completion of at least primary education in many GPE partner countries. [This working paper was written with support and…

This phenomenological study sought to examine the lived experiences of Pennsylvania school leaders in elementary or middle schools with an economically disadvantaged student population of 50% or greater and English Language Arts proficiency exceeding 60% as measured by the 2021-2022 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. Across the Commonwealth…

We study the progressivity of state funding of school districts under Tennessee's weighted student funding formula. We propose a simple definition of progressivity based on the difference in exposure to district per-pupil funding between poor and non-poor students. The realized progressivity of district funding in Tennessee is much smaller--only…

Students with mild to moderate learning disabilities across the nation continue to show significant gaps in English Language Arts (ELA) across the country (Gilmour et al., 2019; Schulte et al., 2016). Data from multiple sources confirm ongoing performance discrepancies on statewide assessments when comparing the performance of students with…