In 1994, Michigan voters approved a ballot initiative that transferred the power in Michigan's education system from local communities to the state. Proposal A succeeded in slowing the growth of local property taxes and narrowing the gap between the richest and poorest districts in Michigan. However, due to a decade of sluggish economic growth,…

The 2010 Acts of the Assembly, Chapter 874, directs the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to conduct a study on state financial aid. In support of this directive, SCHEV conducted a series of meetings with representatives from each public four-year college or university, Richard Bland College, and representatives from the…

Historically, Florida has emphasized access for citizens in setting undergraduate resident tuition for the State University System (SUS). Figure 3 and Figure 6 depict the long-term effects of this, as Florida's undergraduate resident tuition and required fees, among high (RUH) and very high (RUVH) public research universities, have remained second…

This article provides Learning Forward's definition of professional development. Learning Forward is seeking legislative amendments to include its definition in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as reauthorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. These amendments will clarify what practices qualify for federal, state, and district…

For the past thirty years, conventional wisdom has held that cutting public funding will make public institutions more efficient. This idea has profoundly altered support for higher education. University leaders have regularly assured legislators, and the general public, that business-oriented science, fundraising, and sophisticated financing…

Conflictual relations between the owners of Foxwoods Casino and Resort, who are American Indians, and the white residents of Ledyard and nearby Preston and North Stonington townships in southeastern Connecticut are long-standing. They have flared up on numerous occasions and especially since 1982 when the Mashantucket Pequots considered building a…

Economic hardship and uncertainty dominates the discussion of American higher education these days. Since about 80 percent of American students attend public institutions, much of the conversation has centered on their plummeting state aid and soaring student fees. With a hike in student fees by a third in one year, California's situation has been…

In Canada, there is a recent trend toward non-categorization of services of students with emotional and behavioural disabilities (EBD). Yet in Alberta, the coding of students with EBD provides opportunities to diagnose students' learning difficulties but is hindered in this process, in large part, by being tied into special needs funding. Current…

Estimates say that nearly 30 percent of adults in the United States have a criminal record--roughly 65 million individuals. While not all of them have served a jail or prison sentence, they nonetheless face barriers to gainful employment due to the stigma of a record, as well as generally lower levels of education and job training. The overall…

From 1995-96 to 2007-08, the number of undergraduates in the United States grew from about 16.7 million to 21 million (Horn and Berktold 1998; Wei et al. 2009). In 2007-08, two-thirds of all undergraduates received some type of financial aid, including grants, loans, work-study, or some combination of these types of aid. These Web Tables provide…

As state-funded pre-K programs expand--more than 1 million children currently attend such programs--there is debate about the impact of state-funded pre-K on the quality and supply of child care for low-income working families. This policy brief looks at state policies and regulations regarding pre-K expansion that have the potential to positively…

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) follows education budgets and legislation during regular and special legislative sessions, from governors' proposals through final legislative actions in the 16 SREB states. This report includes legislative Web site addresses and descriptions, by state, of gubernatorial budgetary requests and proposals…

As new estimates of state revenues continue to emerge, public officials struggle to understand their implications for public education. The goal of this analysis is to produce rapid projections of the effects on public education of the most recent estimates of declines in state revenues. More specifically, what's sought are both estimates of the…

This brief presents statistics showing that many students from middle-income and lower-income Florida families do not qualify for federal or state grants and scholarships, and that nearly half of state university system middle- and lower-income families do not receive benefits from federal or state financial aid programs. (Contains technical…

This article presents the authors' response to a response to their research on Illinois in which the authors analyze the equity, adequacy, and legal issues related to school finance. The Responders' quarrel with that portion of the authors' research that addresses equity and create a "de novo" analysis, by treating unequals equally--an…