Providing high-quality Career Technical Education (CTE) requires robust, sustained funding designed to be responsive to both the rapidly evolving needs of industry and the diverse needs of learners. Advance CTE embarked on an analysis of states' secondary CTE funding models. In 2014, RTI International, with the support of Advance CTE, conducted…

This chapter describes a comprehensive set of best practices for the evaluation of state formula funding models and state higher education funding in general, based on existing practices within the United States. It represents a review of practices that lead to stakeholder engagement as an objective, collaborative process.

The United States cannot meet its higher education goals without changing the way it funds public colleges and universities. Current funding models do not sufficiently advance fully scaled improvements. Instead, today's models create unfunded mandates: Colleges are required to increase completion rates, but they do not receive essential funding…

Operating revenue for public higher education is derived from several sources, such as state appropriations, tuition, room and board, and contracts. State funding in particular constitutes a large share of revenue and is consequently critical for improving enrollment, completion, and labor market outcomes. However, states differ in how…

The primary purpose of this study was to examine how best a Tennessee 4-year public university can perform under the state's outcomes-based funding formula, most commonly identified as either PF 2.0 or the Complete College Tennessee Act (CCTA) funding formula. Using a mixed methods approach, the research analyzed select input variable performance…

Postsecondary education and middle-skills occupational training are viewed as important paths to higher-paying jobs and careers. Lifelong learning pathways geared toward working learners aged 25 and older also seem essential for career advancement and professional growth in the current job market. However, many learners face financial and other…

This article explains the process behind estimating a National Education Cost Model (NECM) and generating from that model projections of per-pupil costs to achieve 2016 national average outcomes (reading and math grades 3 to 8) across all districts in the United States, from 2019-20 to 2020-21. This article is a follow-up to a preliminary report…

Measures of student disadvantage--or risk--are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little innovation in these measures for decades. We develop a new…