The goal of this brief is to provide school district and school staff with tools to help make more effective and efficient use of resources, particularly American Rescue Plan ESSER III funding. ESSER III funding offers districts and schools an opportunity to not only support their immediate needs of safely reopening schools to in-person…

Recent policy proposals call for significant new investments in early care and education (ECE). These policies are designed to reduce the burden of child care costs, support parental employment, and foster child development by increasing access to high-quality care, especially for children in lower-income families. In this paper, we propose and…

In "Are Texas Teacher Retirement Benefits Adequate?," authors Chad Aldeman and Anthony Randazzo analyze the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) of Texas and find it is not serving all of its members well. Most members will leave their teaching service in Texas with inadequate retirement benefits, and the unfunded liabilities the system has…

The 2020 General Assembly directed the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to develop a plan for implementing a statewide survey of institutional expenditures by program and academic discipline at Virginia's public higher education institutions, and submit a report and recommendations to the Governor and the Chairs of the House…

The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned ICF Consulting to undertake a study to examine the functioning of the Level 4 and 5 (L4-5) qualification and provider market, in order to support its review of L4-5 education. This study examines the characteristics and effectiveness of the Level 4 and 5 (L4-5) market. It specifically explores…

While many policymakers see college credit attainment programs as potential cost savings, little research has examined the actual savings (if any) tied to taking college classes in high school. This Rapid Response brief helps fill the gap, investigating and comparing the costs of providing college credit in high school in three states with the…

Athletics are big business on many college campuses, but does this come with a price tag? This issue brief looks at academic and athletic spending in NCAA Division I public universities between 2005 and 2010. Among a host of findings, this brief shows that the athletic departments of most public colleges and universities competing in NCAA Division…

School business officials are best equipped to lead in funding operating and capital needs because they understand the need for a methodical means of funding ongoing costs over time and the benefits of planning for future financial needs rather than letting emergencies dictate spending priorities. A capital-financing plan makes it possible to…

Conventional wisdom holds that colleges and universities heavily subsidize their students. This assertion seems correct, given that total spending per student is almost always in excess of per student tuition payments. However, as the authors show in this report, the conventional wisdom is wrong because it inappropriately compares only one revenue…

An increase of over 100% in program expenditures for the Pell Grant program over a five year period of time, from $14.7 billion in the 2007-08 award year to $33.4 billion in the 2011-12 award year, places an otherwise popular program under scrutiny. This article considers the factors and options informing federal policy related to the Pell Grant…

Since Breneman and Haarlow (1998) first estimated the national cost of developmental education to be approximately $1 billion dollars, the developmental education landscape has shifted in numerous ways. This paper provides an update to their estimate in light of both these changes and improved data that disaggregates the cost to community colleges…

This paper examines the optimal design for a study-abroad scholarship. A student is awarded a fixed-amount scholarship to participate in the program but will have to pay back the scholarship if his/her performance fails to meet a target level. When the program is highly productive, the scholarship is low and the target performance is high. The…

The purpose of this report is to support educational administrators and policymakers in becoming informed consumers of information about online learning and its potential impact on educational productivity. The report provides foundational knowledge needed to examine and understand the potential contributions of online learning to educational…

The Race to the Top fund (RTT) is intended to be a major federal investment in state and local education capacity and systemic education reforms aligned with federal policy priorities. In coming years, questions will be asked about the extent to which investments made through the RTT grant program improve educational productivity and…

Over the period 2001-2011, the number of applications for university places increased by 17.8%, or just over 37,000. At the same time, the number of offers increased faster in percentage terms (20.5%), while absolute growth was slightly smaller at just under 35,000. As demand for higher education has grown, there has been a trend towards Science,…