This paper presents evidence of the impact of a five-year package of interconnected interventions intended to improve learning environments in eight disadvantaged districts in Malawi. The intervention, which was implemented over five years, provided additional finance to schools to support the hiring of additional teachers and construction of…

Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms…

All fifty U.S. state constitutions include language that guarantees residents' access to a free public education. Plaintiffs in all but two states have brought litigation challenging state school finance systems, and in over half the cases, judges ruled the systems unconstitutional and mandated state legislators to provide more equitable and…

"Varying Degrees," New America's annual survey about Americans' perceptions of higher education, surveyed more than 1,600 adults to find that even when it seems politicians can't agree on higher education policy, Americans across the board are much less divided. Democrats and Republicans nationwide largely agree about the core value and…

The purpose of this historical study was to investigate how individuals articulated the call for the South Texas/Border Initiative, a legislative mandate that funneled unprecedented amounts of funding to underserved universities along the Texas-Mexico border region between 1987 and 2003. Utilizing archival sources, we conducted an analysis of the…

Do perceptions about how the government spends tax dollars affect the willingness to pay taxes? We designed a field experiment to test this hypothesis in a natural, high-stakes context and via revealed preferences. We measure perceptions about the share of property tax revenues that fund public schools and the share of property taxes that are…

Understanding how school districts allocate resources across students and schools is important for designing efficacious and equitable school finance policies. Newly released school-level spending data allow for new insights about the level of spending a student experiences at her school and how well spending corresponds with student…

When it comes to providing children with a high-quality education, money matters. Research shows that sustained and significant increases in school funding can have a lasting positive impact on student achievement and other outcomes -- especially for students from low-income backgrounds. Yet, the U.S. education system is plagued with persistent…

Performance-based funding models for higher education, which tie state support for institutions to performance on student outcomes, have proliferated in recent decades. Some states now tie most of their higher education appropriations to completion outcomes and include bonus payments for historically underrepresented groups to address equity gaps…

Rural areas can provide a rich context for learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), but these communities and the students in them are often overlooked in ongoing efforts to expand access to high-quality K-12 STEM education and workforce development. Addressing barriers, often related to funding, and promoting unrecognized…

Microschools are an alternative to traditional schools for families who might be dissatisfied with local school options. Typically, "microschools" are defined as small, tuition-based schools (serving around 15 students) that are designed to offer a more personalized and flexible learning experience compared with traditional schools.…

In August 2024, the Wisconsin Policy Forum published "Roll Call: A Landscape Review of the Students, Financing, and Performance of Milwaukee's K-12 Schools." That report was intended to ground policy discussions with key facts and nonpartisan insights on Milwaukee's schooling system, and looked at the Milwaukee Public Schools, charter…

Globally, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused disruptions in socio-economic activities. It did not spare higher education institutions, and the research culture was the most affected area. Compared to industrialised countries, relatively little research has been conducted in West Africa on the impacts of COVID-19, especially considering…

Religious schools are facing cultural and social challenges at a time when secularisation processes are accelerating in Chile. This obstacle is particularly true for Catholic Schools (made up more than 90% of religious schools in the country) that, in the last decade, have had to function over an internal crisis due to sexual abuse by the clergy.…

A professional development intervention (PDI) was developed for science teachers, focusing on pedagogies to integrate indigenous knowledge (IK) into school curriculum topics. The study aimed to determine which characteristics of science PDIs were imperative to support teacher learning and influence teacher practice for IK integration in science…