During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, students at a land-grant university in the southeast region of the United States transitioned to online learning. After transitioning online, faculty noticed a lack of student engagement in online courses that reduced retention rates and increased failure rates. Although prior research showed the benefits of…

The evolution of school finance has become increasingly more complex, and accountability and transparency of spending decisions toward academic outcomes have increased, leading to more demands on the superintendent (Bjork & Kowalski, 2005; Kowalski, 2013; Ramirez, 2013). This has led to evolution of the role of the superintendent position in…

Open educational resources (OERs) are an alternative textbook to publisher materials used by colleges and universities. While OERs likely reduce the cost of college for students, research is mixed on the impact of these textbooks on student success in college. The present study utilizes preference score matching (PSM) methodology to compare OER…

As widely reported and documented, the coronavirus pandemic hit schools hard. To address challenges caused by COVID-19, the U.S. Congress created and funded the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). While educators and the field have learned much during the era of reforming high poverty schools, the challenge to improve…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the State of Tennessee, while also incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. This manuscript provides a snapshot of TELS recipients and their outcomes, including narrative discussion on the current…

We study the effects of intergovernmental grants on school spending within the Finnish system of high school education funding. Using a kinked grant rule, the system allocates lump-sum intergovernmental grants to local high school education providers. Utilizing the quasi-experimental variation in grants given by the rule, we identify the effects…

Philanthropic foundations are influential policy entrepreneurs in higher education, advocating new ideas, engaging in collaborative activities, and seeding research to inform the decision-making process. Despite occupying this role, the higher education literature has yet to examine how philanthropic foundations promote ideas between entities or…

This article investigates the impact of tax incentives targeting young innovative firms and broader R&D tax incentives where effects on young firms are observed. It examines effects on R&D additionality, R&D wages, employment growth, turnover growth, and sales growth from innovative activities. It draws on academic literature and…

The role of extracurricular activity in higher education is receiving increasing international attention as a means for developing social and cultural resources for steering social and employment networks. The focus of this paper is on a post-1992 English university partnership with an orchestra, enabling students to attend free concerts. The…

Departmental research administrators offer a wide range of support services to research communities, university central offices, and fellow research administrators in other departments and institutions around the world. It is important for department-level research administration offices to function as a unit to provide centralized services that…

In 2013, NSF funded the Center on Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) to support the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies (CFLT) program, the first such programmatic support center outside NSF's Directorate on Education and Human Resources (EHR). One difficulty NSF confronts when funding such centers, however, is quantifying…

Many district-led summer learning programs are at the intersection of in-school and out-of-school time (OST) learning. These summer programs play a critical role in providing students with academic supports and enrichment during the summer months. Districts offer a range of program types, but most are motivated by district and state policies…

In 2013, California enacted an ambitious school funding reform--the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The LCFF fundamentally overhauled the state's prior K-12 education finance system, which studies found to be inequitable, irrational, and highly centralized. More than a decade after its enactment, a growing body of research indicates the LCFF…

College enrollment has increased over the years but so has the cost. The total cost of attending college -- including tuition, room and board, necessary books and supplies, and more -- would be prohibitive for most students if not for financial aid. Yet, many students still cite financial barriers as the top reason for opting out of college.…

Federal student aid formulas prioritize income over wealth. Using nationally representative data from two cohorts, we argue that federal student aid policy thus under-addresses wealth-driven financial need and that this oversight contributes to racial disparities in student debt, in turn reinforcing the United States's longstanding racial wealth…