This report analyzes variations in eligibility and access to Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) subsidies in 2020. State decisions on implementation within the CCDBG program, along with historically insufficient federal and state funding, limit parents' access to child care assistance. We analyze state-level Administration for Children…

The Institute of Museum and Library Services' (IMLS) Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) is leading the development of the Agency's first Learning Agenda, which is organized around actionable learnings to three research and evaluation priorities: child reading literacy, future of museums and equity grantmaking. The Learning Agenda's primary…

English learners (ELs) are one of the fastest-growing student groups in the U.S. K-12 system, making up about one in 10 students enrolled in public schools nationwide. Despite research showing that EL students need more resources and supports to be successful in school, funding at the federal, state, and local levels to provide those additional…

The Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC) subsidizes child care costs for working families. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 increased the CDCC's generosity during 2021 only. I find that while the CDCC is of relatively little value in its current form, increases in eligibility rates and conditional…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of social class inequality and education policy through the lens of an analysis of the experiences and effects of state, local, and federal policy meant to engage communities around the use of federal funds to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students. The author intends to…

In early 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic closed schools for the rest of the 2019-20 school year (fiscal year 2020 or FY20). The United States Congress deployed funds to help K-12 schools adjust and plan for reopening via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, including the initial $13.2 billion installment through the…

Understanding how urban school districts allocate their education funds can help school leaders create more effective budgeting strategies and provide a basis for advocating for additional funding when necessary. This report provides an overview of how urban districts distribute their financial resources, highlights key areas of spending, and…

The reinstatement of Pell grant eligibility for incarcerated individuals marks a pivotal moment in the landscape of higher education in prison (HEP) programming in the United States. However, despite this promising development, financial barriers persist, hindering the growth and sustainability of HEP initiatives. This qualitative study delves…

School finance debates frequently turn on two crucial questions: (1) How much do state and local governments spend on K-12 education?; and (2) How are education dollars distributed across jurisdictions? This focus makes sense because the answers to these questions determine how well states are able to provide an adequate, equal education for all…

As widely reported and documented, the coronavirus pandemic hit schools hard. To address challenges caused by COVID-19, the U.S. Congress created and funded the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). While educators and the field have learned much during the era of reforming high poverty schools, the challenge to improve…

To address the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress authorized the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF I) in March 2020 with over $6 billion allocated for emergency financial aid. In this paper, we utilize the administrative burden framework to analyze HEERF I implementation for a stratified random sample of…

Funding for community colleges varies significantly, even within the same state. Several factors account for these differences, including more generous funding for smaller institutions to compensate for their higher costs per student, unequal local funding from property tax revenues, and political forces. In theory, this variation could lead to…

The Ministry of Education provides schools with equity funding, in addition to their core funding, so they can work in different ways to help students with socioeconomic barriers reach their potential. Through Budget 2022, the Government has provided a 50% ($75 million) increase in equity funding. From January 2023, the Ministry has used the…

As populist forces stretch apart higher education and government, colleges lobby in measurable ways to secure scarce funding and respond to accountability regulations. The non-profit and corporate lobbying literature provides a basis of comparison to ask if colleges lobby like corporations, which have been successful lobbyists under challenging…

This article combines theories of racialized organizations with insights on institutionalization to empirically analyze the role of grantmakers in unsettling postsecondary racial inequity. Using longitudinal data on federal grantmaking to institutions of higher education, we examine whether and how grantmaking policies (re)produce or diminish…