Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K-12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state's school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand how superintendents leading large, high-profile and politically complex urban districts make sense of their district-community context and advocate for issues of equity. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative multi-case study took place over the 2017-18 school year and involved…

The State Indicators Database (SID), which is the School Finance Indicators Database's (SFID) primary product, includes approximately 125 variables, but this report focuses on three key school finance measures: fiscal effort, adequacy, and progressivity. This report discusses how states' systems tend to mediate the impact of economic downturns and…

The evolution of community colleges from their origins as junior colleges to institutions with dual missions to provide both academic and workforce preparation raises questions about the impact of a college's mission focus on their students' labor market success. We examine this question using the 58 colleges in the North Carolina Community…

African American female students' elevated suspension risk has received national attention. Despite a number of studies documenting racial/ethnic disparities in African American females' school suspension risk, few investigations have attempted to explain why these disparities occur. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of colorism in…

Reading comprehension skills is in the basic skills that are tried to gain in students. It is likely that a person who has not reached the reading comprehension skill will face many difficulties, whether in daily life or professional life. In the study, the characteristics of school environment of different countries have been determined and the…

This study presents an examination of how institutional characteristics might influence a four-year institution of higher education's achievement in sustainability, as measured by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS). Specifically, it examined the potential role Carnegie classification, sector, location, number of…

Those tasked with leading large school districts direct incredibly complex organizations in what are often contentious political and social contexts, with powerful stakeholder groups espousing conflicting policy priorities. Because of their high-profile positions, superintendents often face uniquely persistent and powerful resistance and must…

Many school districts have turned to summer school as a strategy for addressing persistent declines in student achievement after COVID-19. We examine the impact of 2023 summer programs on academic recovery across 400,000 students in eight large U.S. districts. Using value-added models, we find modest but significant improvements in student math…

Background: School environments providing a wide selection of physical activities and sufficient facilities are both essential and formative to ensure young people adopt active lifestyles. We describe the association between school opportunities for physical activity and socioeconomic factors measured by low-income cutoff index, school size…

"Current Term Enrollment Estimates," published every December and May by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, include national enrollment estimates by institutional sector, state, enrollment intensity, age group, and gender. Enrollment estimates are adjusted for Clearinghouse data coverage rates by institutional sector,…

College readiness is increasingly prioritized in federal and state policy initiatives. This study sought to examine the relationship between college readiness and several school-level factors. Specifically, quantitative data from 328 high schools were utilized to investigate the relationships among school-wide academic performance, school size,…

An increasing emphasis on principals as key to school improvement has contributed to efforts to elevate principal effectiveness that have taken various forms across the US. The primacy of the state as the focal point of educational reform elevates the value of understanding commonalities and differences among states in characteristics of…

The potential occurrence of variable returns to size in research activity is a factor to be considered in choices about the size of research organizations and also in the planning of national research assessment exercises, so as to avoid favoring those organizations that would benefit from such occurrence. The aim of the current work is to improve…

When it comes to American education, few policy areas are as misunderstood -- or as crucial -- as school finance. Over the past several years, a political and empirical consensus has emerged about the importance of equitable and adequate school funding for high quality K-12 education. In other words, the evidence is clear that money does, indeed,…