School districts have increasingly adopted weighted student funding (WSF) formulas that allocate dollars, rather than staff positions, to schools in the name of equity and flexibility. While research to date has studied equity in some of these districts, there is no research that examines the entire cohort of WSF districts together. This paper…

School districts have increasingly adopted weighted student funding (WSF) formulas that allocate dollars, rather than staff positions, to schools in the name of equity and flexibility. While research to date has studied equity in some of these districts, there is no research that examines the entire cohort of WSF districts together. This paper…

In 2021-2022, Head Start served nearly 790,000 young children, primarily from low-income families. However, the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) estimates that far more children are eligible than can be served due to limited resources, heightening the importance of targeting services effectively. House Report 117-96 includes a…

Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state-level and national funding and enrollment trends over time. The SHEF report provides the earliest possible review of state funding for higher…

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report is produced annually by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) to broaden understanding of the context and consequences of public policy decisions in each state that contribute to public higher education funding levels and funding distributions across states and…

Of all the rules that the U.S. Department of Education will have to formulate for the Every Student Succeeds Act, the proposed regulations to monitor that states and districts spend comparable amounts for schools eligible and not eligible to use Title I funds are attracting the most attention. Currently, districts can show comparability based on…

This multiple case study investigated 143 teachers' responses to focus group questions about their experiences with the simultaneous implementation of three disruptive innovations as part of the U.S. Race-to-the-Top (RTTT) agenda: the Common Core Learning Standards, data-driven instruction, and annual professional performance reviews. We asked:…

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts have led to new federal data collections on school-level expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required states to collect and report, for the first time, school-level data on both personnel and non-personnel expenditures…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of participation in School-Wide Positive Behavior Support on the number of office discipline referrals written and the financial impact it had on the allocation of funds in both high and low socioeconomic status schools in the selected school district. The top 10 percent of elementary schools…

For fiscal year 2010, Congress appropriated $14.5 billion for Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), which funds services to students in schools with high concentrations of students from low-income families. Title I, Part A includes several fiscal requirements, which are designed to prevent local school…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is due for reauthorization, and Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Chakkah Fattah have both proposed revisions to the comparability provision of the federal Title I program. Harkin's proposed legislation requires the use of per pupil expenditures, including actual teacher salaries, to demonstrate…

The purpose of this report is to help advance the recommendations of the National Commission on Adult Literacy, for the Adult Education and Economic Growth Act under development by Congressmen Patrick Kennedy and Reuben Hinojosa. Current law is compared to National Commission amendments in such areas as: Adult and Dislocated Worker Employment and…

In 2002, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that veteran students were awarded similar amounts of Title IV aid as nonveteran students, and veterans' total federal aid was greater when Chapter 30 GI benefits were included. This report responds to request from the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, Committee on Veterans' Affairs…

Reforms in American public education have not resolved the wide academic performance gap between students attending schools in poor, large, urban centers versus schools in wealthier areas. Aggregate performance outcomes on state achievement tests reveal that some school districts consistently outperform others, a few fluctuate over time but are…

A long standing debate among policymakers as well as researchers is whether and how funding affects the quality of education. Often missing from the discussion is information about the costs of providing education at the school level and below, yet such information could impart a better indication of the linkages between outcomes and resources…