As more families turn to Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) to customize their children's education, many are finding the system unnecessarily complex and restrictive. This paper argues that states can reduce misuse and improve program integrity not by tightening controls, but by shifting incentives. Drawing lessons from other successful government…

Amidst chronic disparities in per-student resources, how best to construct funding formulas to equitably fund colleges and universities is an enduring policy concern. This brief focuses on a historically overlooked financial mechanism, categorical funding, to examine its role in funding (in)equity. Leveraging illustrative data from four…

While prior research has indicated increased funding to higher education has resulted in positive outcomes related to enrollment, retention and graduation rates, and degree and certificate completions (Cummings et al., 2021), there is more to learn about disparities in funding to institutions and target student populations. With this aim, the…

As outcome gaps persist between students of varying racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, it remains critical to assess how equitably school funding regimes allocate resources, perhaps most importantly in segregated areas. In this article, I apply a QuantCrit framework to examine school funding in the St. Louis region using newly…

In this paper, we contribute to the literature on school facility funding by examining California's facility funding formula and assessing how the current state system facilitates meeting annual investment standards in facility stewardship and upkeep. To do this, we quantify the total school square footage of school facilities and then calculate…

It is generally accepted that the nation's community colleges are underfunded, especially given the job that society expects of them. Accordingly, practitioners and scholars have long argued for new revenue sources and funding models. This essay briefly explains one such alternative model, namely funding adequacy. This concept has a long history…

The study examined the relationship between expenditures and student achievement in Ohio school districts for the years 2015 through 2019. Data were analyzed for categorical district expenditures correlated to student achievement. Operating and instructional expenditure categories, along with typology demographics, comprised the independent…

The distribution of state funding to school districts has a tremendous impact on student learning opportunities. State leaders juggle different priorities, tradeoffs and incentives when designing funding formulas with the goal of ensuring every student has the learning opportunities to succeed. This toolkit offers a strategic guide for reforming…

2025 promises to be a year of transition for North Carolina's children, accompanied by both significant challenges and tremendous opportunities. Local public schools will play a unique and central role as the state contends with leadership changes across all levels of government, rapid technological and economic transformation, and demographic…

Unequal school funding is a phenomenon that promotes an educational structure where certain public schools receive higher financial support and resources while other schools receive lower levels. An important but overlooked dimension of the phenomenon is its potential effect on teacher job satisfaction in underfunded and well-funded schools. This…

In April 2024, the School Finance Indicators Database released new estimates of school district funding gaps, which refer to the difference between how much per-pupil funding each district "receives" and how much per-pupil funding each district "needs." Linking these estimates to Texas Education Agency (TEA) student achievement…

This hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions examines the immediate and long-term challenges facing public school teachers, including low pay, teacher shortages, and underfunded public schools. Opening statements were presented by: (1) Honorable Bernie Sanders, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and…

In 2024, the Australian Federal Labor Government announced the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025-2034, which sets policy, inter alia, for Australian school funding for the next ten years. This paper contributes to the critical policy analysis literature on school funding by undertaking a focused analysis of this recent policy, deploying a…

Arizona has represented the epicenter of school choice in the United States. The state has had open enrollment for district schools for 30 years, charter schools for more than 25 years, a private school tax credit program for nearly as long, and was the first state in the country in 2011 to enact direct parent-appropriations through targeted…

This brief conducts a fiscal analysis of the West Virginia Hope Scholarship Program for fiscal year (FY) 2024, the program's second year in operation. The analysis estimates the net fiscal effects of the program on state and local taxpayers statewide and for each school district. It also provides fiscal context and basic data to help inform the…