Congestion is a persistent and expensive problem, costing the nation collectively over $300 billion each year. Cities have generally attempted to address congestion using an unoriginal set of expensive strategies, like building new roads or expanding public transit, and many cities are considering implementing congestion pricing. Expanding school…

According to the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE, 2008), there were 679,724 homeless students in the United States enrolled in schools in 2006-2007. In the 2017-2018 school year, there were 1,508,265 homeless students in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). In just over 12 years, the homeless student population had…

Due to the growing number of students enrolling as homeless in American public schools, a quantitative design was applied to determine if students in an Illinois suburban, kindergarten through eighth grade school district (District A), who are enrolled under the McKinney-Vento Act and are receiving resources of food, shelter, clothing, and…

There is no question that students who experience homelessness, like all students, are entitled to be educated. A federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, requires states to provide homeless children and youth with the same access to free appropriate public education as is available to other students. The Act also requires…

In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common…

Although there exists a large body of literature concerning the impacts of school choice policies, few studies focus on the choices of rural students. Using a unique dataset that includes administrative records, geocoded addresses, and commute times for Michigan public school students over 6 years, I describe who participates in interdistrict…

This is the 18th edition of the Mackinac Center's annual school privatization survey. The Center asks every school district in the state if they outsource one of the three main noninstructional services -- custodial, transportation and food services. Responses from officials in all 539 public school districts between June 2 and September 24 were…

Motivated by potential financial savings, four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching public schools in 25 states as of 2018. The consequences of the four-day school week for students, schools, and communities are largely unknown. This paper uses district-level panel data from Oklahoma and a…

This multimodal critical discourse analysis is part of a larger equity audit of how the websites of 11 of the largest U.S. school districts discussed access to dual language bilingual education (DLBE). Prior research has frequently documented how administrators utilize DLBE programs to compete with one another for the supposedly necessary resource…

In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025-26. UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and expanded learning opportunities to provide full-day early…

Public school districts use private contractors to provide support services in an effort to save money, improve services and better prioritize district resources. The Mackinac Center has surveyed school districts about their use of contractors since 2001. This year's survey revealed that 69.7% of schools contract out for food, custodial or…

Examining the experiences of families of students with disabilities seeking to exercise school choice is crucial to informing cogent policies and practices that will ensure equitable access. This report explores the perceptions and experiences of families of students with disabilities enrolled in charter and traditional district schools in…

This report is the fourth in a series describing the RAND Corporation's evaluation of the two Delaware weighted funding programs for disadvantaged K-12 schools spanning the 2019-2020 to 2021-2022 school years: Opportunity Funding and the Student Success Block Grant. The authors drew on annual surveys of Delaware local education agencies (LEAs)…

Research concerning family preferences for schooling indicates that they value proximity to home as much as academic quality when choosing schools. However, preferences for proximity likely represent inability to access schools farther away from home, especially for disadvantaged students. I test whether distance and district boundaries constrain…

Telecommuting is currently used in many industries and is celebrated for fostering job satisfaction and increased productivity. However, telecommuting is not widely practiced in K-12 environments. Two departments in AISD implemented pilot telecommuting programs. This report presents survey results from these pilot implementation models and…