For more than two decades, federal law has required states to identify schools failing to provide students with a high-quality education and has led to substantial debate about how best to do so. Appropriately identifying the lowest performing schools matters because it allows state and local education agencies to target limited resources for…

This is the appendices for the full report, "Identifying the Nation's Lowest Performing Schools: Shifts Following the Passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)." This study examines state identification of schools for the most intensive support to see how changes in federal laws and regulations played out nationally and at the…

The Department of Basic Education in South Africa acknowledges that 99% of primary school-aged children attend school, but attendance at secondary school level is not yet universal. Low levels of secondary school attendance contribute to poverty and unemployment. We investigated the socio-demographic elements associated with school attendance…

There was a fundamental reform of special educational needs policy in Scotland with the ratification of the 2004 Education (Additional Support for Learning) (ASL) (Scotland) Act. This paper explores official statistics from 2008-2023 by examining variations in additional support needs (ASN) and funding across the 32 Local Authorities (LAs). The…

This study uses a concurrent embedded mixed-methods design to assess the impact of additional funding on student outcomes in a large, urban school district in the Southeastern United States. The district implemented student-based budgeting (SBB), which allocates dollars to schools based on student characteristics using a weighted student funding…

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…

Background/Context: This study contributes to the theoretical development of Critical Race Theory and further advances its potential as a causal model for education policy analyses. Critical Race Theorists study the impact of American law and policies via critical social structures and resource allocations to test how they uphold white supremacy.…

This study offers a comparative examination of desegregation policy reforms in Belgium, Chile, and the Netherlands, addressing equity reforms to universal school choice systems. Through an analysis of the reform trajectories, we explore the evolution of policies, the causal mechanisms of change, efforts to institutionalize policies, and the…

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 states reckon with racial enrollment and attainment gaps in higher education, some have made efforts to address them through their higher education funding. Two common approaches are outcomes-based funding (OBF) and Promise programs, as each can be designed with an explicit race equity lens. This report summarizes a two-year study examining the…

This article is an exploratory analysis of nearly 40 years of trends in education funding to explore the current state of funding for Indian elementary and secondary (K-12) education and whether it is sufficient. A description of the current funding system for K-12 Indian education, four programs undergirding the analysis, and relevant literature…

This paper takes a novel time series perspective on K-12 school spending. About half of school spending is financed by state government aid to local districts. Because state aid is generally income conditioned, with low-income districts receiving more aid, state aid acts as a mechanism for risk sharing between school districts. We show that…

Federal housing policy continues to rely heavily on the private market and the immense capital at its disposal for the production of low income housing. But among government housing officials and across the broad network of non-profit housing professionals in the U.S., the belief in a "right to housing" is strong, along with a vision of…

Racially segregated schools influence the distribution of educational opportunity. When students of different races enroll in separate schools, systematic differences in access to school resources and exposure to high levels of student need can emerge. Using recently available national school-level finance data, we find that typical Black and…

Recent expansions of child tax, food assistance and health insurance programs have made American families' need for a robust social safety net highly evident, while researchers and policymakers continue to debate the best way to support families via the welfare state. How much do children -- and which children -- benefit from social spending?…