Given the low price of community college relative to need-based aid, last-dollar "free community college" (i.e., Promise) programs often only marginally reduce students' real costs. Given this reality, some claim that these programs impact students largely through "messaging": information conveying the affordability of…

Historically, many American students from poor families have been trapped in sorely underfunded public schools. The conventional wisdom suggests that school funding remains unequal across low- and high-income schools and that equal funding equates to equitable resources for students. This brief challenges the notion that economically disadvantaged…

The objective of this study is to examine the educational experiences of gifted students in Paraguay through the lens of the Actiotope Model of Giftedness, which provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing the interplay between environmental and individual factors in the development of giftedness. In Paraguay, the approach to gifted education…

This study explores high school families' understanding of college financing. The research examines what college-bound students and parents know about financial aid, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®), scholarships, and student loans. The report evaluates perceptions, exposes common misconceptions, and gauges how prepared high…

Do perceptions about how the government spends tax dollars affect the willingness to pay taxes? We designed a field experiment to test this hypothesis in a natural, high-stakes context and via revealed preferences. We measure perceptions about the share of property tax revenues that fund public schools and the share of property taxes that are…

Three decades after the first charter school law passed in the United States, myths about these public schools not only persist but continue to fuel strong claims and divisive debates. Commentators point to education management organizations (EMOs), for-profit organizations which manage or operate a network of charter schools, as examples of…

This qualitative study investigates the perceptions of alternative school administrators in North Carolina about the impact of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) on them and their campuses. The study interviewed four alternative high school administrators with schools labeled as Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) during the 2018-2019…

California's school system is under tremendous long-run fiscal pressure; allocating resources efficiently is therefore paramount. Economic analysis--making sure districts and schools are spending their budgets wisely--is the method used to identify effectiveness and efficiency. This method responds to the question educational professionals face:…

In almost any conversation about accountability for private schools, accountability for public schools is assumed. This is a dangerous myth. By assuming that the edifice that states and the federal government have created over the past several decades actually holds schools accountable, school choice advocates immediately find themselves in an…

Educational choice programs--defined broadly as programs that provide parents with financial aid to help their children opt out of the traditional public school system--are a hallmark of meaningful educational reform. Yet despite widespread news coverage of such programs, polls show most Americans are unfamiliar with how educational choice…