Since 2021, unprecedented increases in energy costs, rapid increases in food costs and substantial increases in the cost of housing via higher rent/mortgage costs have driven a dramatic rise in the cost of living across England. Despite inflation having fallen from its peak in winter 2022, costs remain high compared to incomes and cost pressures…

The cost-of-living has been rising sharply across England since 2021, including unprecedented increases in energy costs, rapid increases in the costs of food and significant increases in the costs of housing via higher rents/mortgage costs. Drawing on online surveys of over 2700 teachers and senior leaders in April and May 2023 in mainstream and…

This brief provides guidance to decision makers in schools, districts, state education departments, and intermediary organizations about ways that cost analyses can help inform their decisions about program choices, budgets, and strategies. It addresses questions about: (1) why cost information matters in education; (2) what cost metrics are…

In Pennsylvania as in many other states, employee pension costs are a significant source of financial pressure for school districts (Zeehandelaar and Northern 2013, Pennsylvania Public Employees' Retirement Commission 2013). In order to gain greater insight into the nature of Pennsylvania school districts' financial burden related to pension…

In this paper, I use Levin and McEwan's (2001) cost feasibility approach and personnel data obtained from the Superintendent of Public Instruction to estimate the cost of providing coaching support to every newly hired principal in Washington State. Based on this descriptive analysis, I estimate that the cost to provide leadership coaching to…

Freedom of any kind has intrinsic value, and education freedom is controversial, in need of empirical assessment of possible and likely trade-offs between freedom from state control and social goals such as equity and cohesion. Without a reasonable empirical measure of education freedom we can only cite the controversies and choose sides. The…

Reply to an article printed in the April issue. (IRT)

Argues that a cost of education index presented in the winter 1980 issue may create inequities in the treatment of both taxpayers and pupils, mainly because of its evaluation of teacher salary costs. (IRT)

The author defends his conceptualization of a cost of education index against criticisms made in the preceding article. The defense focuses on the availability of teachers and the impact of this availability on education costs. (IRT)

The purpose of this Information Aid is to alert school officials to changes and revisions in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), to familiarize them with differences between the former CPI and the new and revised indexes, to demonstrate how the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) computes changes in the CPI, to indicate appropriate uses of the CPI,…

Outlines one approach for assessing and measuring the differences in the costs of education services and reports the results of an application of this approach to data for the state of California. (Author/IRT)

Suggests that Florida's finance formula to relieve interdistrict cost-of-living differences fails to equalize school district attractiveness. (DW)

This report is divided into four sections. Section 1 is a short discussion of the economic theory underlying the construction of the cost of education index and an example of how the index is calculated. Also presented are descriptions of the factors included in the statistical analysis to control for quality, quantity, and cost differences and…

Except under specific conditions, adjusting state school finance plans to compensate for differences in the salaries paid to teachers has the potential for creating even greater inequities rather than for reducing existing inequities. (Author/IRT)