Many school educators struggle to reconcile the onslaught of mandatory and competing, top-down policies. Educators must merge policies into a singular plan that reflects the local stakeholders' goals and values. Given the federal and state accountability movement, schools are forced to build capacity around the use of on-site data and research…

California state-level policies are responsible for allocating nearly 80 percent of the revenue received by its K-12 school districts. In 2013-14, the state implemented the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which changed the allocation formula from one based primarily on equal revenue per pupil to an equity-focused allocation based primarily…

Property tax limits have been found to reduce property tax revenue, with compensatory increases in replacement taxes often not sufficiently making up for funding loss and systematically promoting inequity. Consequently, such practices suggest severe implications for school district fiscal capacity. Our study explored this issue in South Carolina…

Young children's ideas of fairness have been studied in a range of laboratory settings with findings that children see fairness as equal distribution of resources. However, many studies occurred in decontextualized environments (i.e., laboratory settings), which hardly provide opportunities for children to exhibit nuanced ways to enact fairness.…

Despite compelling evidence that master's degrees don't systematically make teachers more effective for their students, most US school districts provide a pay premium for them. They should stop, the sooner the better, and states should take the lead in pushing them to do so. Education dollars--whether COVID-19 relief funds or predictable annual…

The climate crisis presents an unprecedented global challenge, which can also be an opportunity for Commonwealth ministers of education to demonstrate what science-driven, justice-centred, and civic-minded climate leadership can do to help put small island developing states and climate-vulnerable countries on a path to climate resilience and…

The Children's Budget 2022 provides a comprehensive analysis of the share of spending allocated to kids across more than 250 government programs in the federal budget. This report provides an overview of the full report, where analysis found that the share of spending domestically and internationally on children has increased in recent years. [For…

School district leaders can have a vast influence on school improvement and student achievement. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the experiences of school district leaders with budget allocation and decision-making responsibility for literacy and the factors that determined their budget allocation decisions. This study…

Data from high-quality State assessments can inform instruction and help school leaders drive resources to the schools and students that need them the most. This dear colleague letter from the U.S. Secretary of Education reminds all who report and interpret student outcomes this year that assessment data has always been meant to be used…

This non-regulatory guidance discusses provisions that govern within-district allocations under Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and accompanying regulations in 34 C.F.R. §§ 200.64, 200.77, and 200.78. It first addresses required and…

This paper contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intra-state changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends, and demographic changes. Using state-level data from…

This article contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intrastate changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends, and demographic changes. Using state-level data…

Budgets are moral documents, reflecting our priorities as a nation by deciding where to allocate resources. Congress is targeting cuts and policy changes that limit access to health care, nutrition programs, and basic financial stability for millions of children, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the…

The coronavirus pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to higher education, intensifying long-standing systemic inequities in college affordability and access. For many students, the total cost of attendance exceeds what they can afford, even with financial aid. The Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) provided a crucial financial…

In common understanding, resilience enables students to withstand adverse conditions. Resilient students achieve moderate to good educational outcomes in spite of high risks. To foster academic resilience, a deep understanding of risk and resources, their interplay and moderating effects is essential. We aim to achieve this goal by using hidden…