In his 2012-13 budget Governor Brown proposed a new system for allocating state revenue among California school districts. By all accounts the current system is complex and opaque. In contrast, the proposed system--a weighted pupil funding formula--is simple and transparent. Using the PPIC School Finance Model, we compare how this formula would…

This study provides a literature review on school funding formulas across OECD countries. It looks at three salient questions from a comparative perspective: i) What kind of school formula funding schemes exist and how are they used, particularly for promoting the needs of socially disadvantaged pupils?; ii) How do school formula funding regimes…

Education spending cuts are upon us. After years of non-stop increases--national k-12 per-pupil spending is up by one-third in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1995--schools now face the near certainty of repeated annual budget cuts for the first time since the Great Depression. In some states and districts, reductions will be dramatic--well into…

The Early Childhood Block Grant (ECBG) distributes state funding for preschool and birth-to-three programs in Illinois. The authors conducted a case study in Evanston, a city in north Cook County, Illinois, interviewing community representatives and analyzing ECBG program data to discern how ECBG funds are used to provide early childhood services.…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to illustrate how universities play an institutional role in inflating student grade point averages (GPA) by modifying academic polices such as course withdraw, repeats, and satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade options. Design/methodology/approach: Three research strategies are employed: an examination of eight…

The 2013 federal Budget was delivered ironically the same day as the Parliamentary Budget Officer was in court seeking more information about the impact of the government's $5.2 billion in spending cuts announced last year. The lack of budgetary transparency and accountability has become a hallmark of the Conservative government. Anyone expecting…

Illinois confronts a financial crisis that threatens its capacity to implement the state's long-fought-for plan for improving our education system. Two-thirds of our school districts are now deficit-spending. Districts have dismissed at least 6,400 educators and aides, closed schools, lengthened bus routes, and reduced programs in everything from…

In 2012 Spain inaugurated a reform of its higher education financial aid system inspired by three principles: cost-sharing, increasing academic performance and school efficiency. This reform has shifted the aim of the system from equality of access to a type of meritocracy that can be defined as class-biased, as it is only applied to low-income…

The fiscal climate of restraint in the Canadian province of Ontario has led to increased calls for a more diversified higher education system. Significant diversity in the university sector in Ontario has not been achieved that underscores the importance of understanding government policy and its related influences on institutional diversity. This…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative seeks to prepare all students to graduate high school without remedial needs, to improve transparency across states' accountability systems, and to foster efficiencies in the development and distribution of educational resources. The reform was adopted in more than 40 states and has been described as…

This report documents the first-year of implementing Cycle-based Budgeting at Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, KY). To address the limitations of incremental budgeting and zero-based budgeting, a Cycle-based Budgeting model was developed and implemented in JCPS. Specifically, each new program needs to submit an on-line budget request…

The State University System of Florida has developed three tools that aid in guiding the System's future: (1) The Board of Governors' 2025 System Strategic Plan is driven by goals and associated metrics that stake out where the System is headed; (2) The Board's Annual Accountability Report provides yearly tracking for how the System is progressing…

The Administration's January proposal for the 2014-15 state budget projects a surplus, due to painful budget cutting in recent years combined with the economic recovery and voter approval of new revenues. While the proposal invests some of the additional revenue in children, it falls well short of what is needed. California's kids have borne a…

After reaching a low point in 2012, state investment in higher education increased for the second year in a row in 2014--something that had not happened since the Great Recession of 2008 began. With greater stability in some, though certainly not all, state budgets, many Western legislatures in 2014 looked for new ways to contain college costs for…

This paper explores what happens to similar groups of children educated in different school districts. In this case, the "twins" in the study are groups of students who live in the same state in similar geographies and who share certain demographic characteristics. For this report, "twin districts" have very similar sizes and…