Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs), a combination of court-ordered and legislative reforms, have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. In this study, we estimate the effects of SFRs on revenues and expenditures between 1990 and 2014 for twenty-six states. We find that, on…

The impact of the pandemic has once again pushed higher education institutions to the limit, forcing many private not-for-profit institutions to rethink their budgeting plans. As students consider alternative options to college, become more selective in their academic study, and seek greater resources, institutions will have to make difficult…

We analyze the votes taken in the Ohio State Legislature pertaining to the establishment of six school voucher programs: The Ohio Scholarship and Tutoring Program, The Autism Scholarship, The Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship, The Educational Choice Pilot Scholarship, The Educational Choice Scholarship, and the Income-based Scholarship…

The complexities surrounding public school funding are not unique to Ohio. There have been numerous legal challenges in the State Supreme Courts and seminal cases from the U.S. Supreme Court which have assigned the practices and formulas by which schools are funded to the individual states. Although previous research has investigated voter…

School systems are under increasing pressure to improve student performance. Several states have recently explored adopting student count methods for school funding purposes that incentivize school attendance and continuous enrollment by adjusting funding for changes in enrollment or attendance over the course of the school year. However, no…

This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California…

Our fixed-effects panel data analysis of state spending on higher education fills a near void of studies examining capital expenditures on higher education. In our study, we found that political characteristics (e.g., interest group activity, organizational structure, and formal powers) largely account for differences between general fund and…

In this article, we explore how partisanship affects state higher education policy priorities and expenditures. We assume that party coalitions are heterogeneous and policy preferences/priorities differ via mediating factors. We find that Democratic Party strength positively affects state funding for higher education but that the effect diminishes…

This paper sets out a new budget allocation formula for schools, designed to achieve a more equitable distribution of educational achievement. In addition to needs-based elements, the suggested composite allocation formula includes an improvement component, whereby schools receive budgetary allocations based on a new incentive measure developed in…

We examine the flow of federal grants-in-aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent roles of state political institutions, political preferences, economic and…

This article considers the role of higher education in state budgets. It empirically models and tests the balance wheel hypothesis in a robust framework. The balance wheel model posits that in good economic times, higher education is an attractive area for states to fund and tends to be funded at a higher rate than other state budget categories.…

For decades, state funding of public historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) has been shown to be de facto discriminatory relative to the funding of their predominately white counterparts. Although the dual system has been legally dismantled, the disparate funding has remained in place in a number of ways. For example, recent research…

In attempting to explain state support of public higher education, this study develops a theory-driven, comprehensive conceptualization of the state political system within a larger theoretical framework that consists of state economic and demographic factors and higher education system attributes. Furthermore, although the higher education policy…

This study examined the relationship between and among the changes in the level of institutional fundraising and changes in state funding at Maryland public 4-year institutions. As institutions have become more engaged in fundraising, the impact of private giving success on changes in state funding becomes more apparent in the context of increased…

The fiscal capacity of a school district measures the difference between a district's ability to raise revenues locally and the expenditures needed to provide some specified level of educational services. This article uses several different approaches to calculate fiscal capacity for school districts in Ohio from 1996 to 2006. The results show…