This article analyses the Swedish case of the government's funding for equity, which annually provides over 600 million euros to improve equity. Being one of the largest funding schemes ever for work towards educational equity it also provides full autonomy for local education authorities (LEAs) to use the money at their discretion. By studying…

When the state of Texas took control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in the summer of 2023, it marked the end of a multi-year legal battle between the district and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the beginning of a community-led campaign to re-take control of the district. Since, students and community groups have rallied to…

School rezoning is the process of drawing and redrawing school attendance boundaries (SABs). However, studies explicitly focused on changing SABs through rezoning or other mechanisms are spread across multiple bodies of literature. Rezoning is also a politically contentious issue governed by local school boards, tying it to conceptual work on the…

I examine whether the impact of the Great Recession on school district spending, the allocation of resources, and student achievement varied depending on the strength of state's teachers' unions. Employing a diff-in-diff-in-diff identification strategy, I find that school districts in states with strong teachers' unions experienced significantly…

State and local government decisions about how school funding is raised and allocated have profound impacts on American public education, and in recent years, experts have documented large increases in one type of spending in particular: public pensions. Because most data on school district pension expenditures are at the state level, it has so…

Summer programs have historically been a staple in public school districts' arsenals to help students keep up academically and recover from summer break-related academic setbacks. In addition to academic support, summer programs may have a positive impact on students' physical and mental health, development of interests, and development of social…

The aim of this applied dissertation was to develop a better understanding of how elementary principals in a large school district in the southeastern United States perceive their self-efficacy as instructional leaders and administrators. The pressures of high accountability play an impactful role in how principals view their roles and their…

This paper examines the financial transparency and accountability practices before and after the 2023 state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Superintendent Mike Miles and his Board of Managers reallocated critical district resources towards troubling new "priorities," while the district was facing a sizable…

School districts in the United States often borrow on the municipal bond market to pay for capital projects. Districts serving economically disadvantaged communities tend to receive lower credit ratings and pay higher interest rates. To remedy this problem, twenty-four states have established credit enhancement programs that promise to repay…

The Local Control Funding Formula, executed in part through the Local Control and Accountability Plans, allows California school districts to allocate funds based on their needs as identified through goals and action items. This research project sheds light on the extent to which the funds have been utilized in the classroom and at the school…

Across the United States, school districts are reshaping the role of principal supervisors to include supervision practices intended to enhance the instructional and leadership skills of the principals they supervise. The purpose of this research study is to add to the existing body of research involving the predominant practices that principal…

This policy analysis examined the intersection of a statistical model and locus of control to recommend an accountability model that best upholds the criteria of equity, efficacy, and impact on student learning for Missouri schools. Using Eugene Bardach's eightfold path and informed by the quality education in schools framework, this analysis…

In this quasi-experimental study, we examined STEMscopes program impacts on science achievement in Longhorn ISD. The report specifically analyzed STEMscopes impacts on STAAR and MAP Growth scores. The present study used a school-level quasi-experimental design, where 8 STEMscopes schools were selected for inclusion and 8 comparison schools (using…

Instructional leaders require timely and predictive data to guide post-pandemic systemic changes. We investigated the predictability of an observational instrument, the Rigor Appraisal, and its association with achievement and other school effectiveness measures in a sample of 53 schools in Illinois. We found that increases in the Rigor Appraisal…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and examine the autonomous decision-making process and fiscal strategies used by Evidence-Based Funding Tier-One decision-makers. The processes utilized, factors considered, and results achieved were studied retroactively to learn how school districts approach allocation of Evidence-Based…