The expense of attending college is one factor that may explain why low-income students often drop out of school. In California, despite generous state aid and relatively low fees at community colleges, many low-income students still have substantial college-related costs that they cannot cover. To compound matters, federal support for students…

This paper examines the implications of tuition and need-based financial aid policies for family income--post-secondary (PS) attendance relationships. We first conduct a parallel empirical analysis of the effects of parental income on PS attendance for recent high school cohorts in both the U.S. and Canada using data from the 1997 Cohort of the…

The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965" ("ESEA") requires that school districts provide services to higher-poverty, Title I schools, from state and local funds, that are at least comparable to services in lower-poverty, non-Title I schools. The current Title I comparability requirement allows school districts to demonstrate compliance…

By late 2008, the United States was in the midst of its most severe economic recession since the 1930s, brought on by a collapse in real estate prices and exacerbated by the failure of many large banks and financial institutions. Heeding calls from economists, Congress and the Obama administration passed a historic law in early 2009 to stimulate…

Tax revenue flows to California's nearly 1,000 school districts through many different channels. According to the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence (2007), this system is so complex that the state cannot determine how revenues are distributed among school districts, and after reviewing a large number of academic studies in the Getting…

This report outlines the case for an education amendment to the US Constitution to reduce radical disparities in the allocation of resources and funds for the education of the nation's public school students. The report argues that an education amendment is the best way to fundamentally reform the "structural arrangements" that are wasting the…

While studies have examined the relationship between financial aid and college access, few have evaluated the relationship between financial aid and academic success. Factors that are associated with financial need, such as being low income, are also associated with a lack of academic success, making it difficult to isolate the effect of…

This paper reports on the implementation of the Special Education Reimbursement ("Circuit Breaker") Program. Fiscal Year 2007 is the fourth year implementing the Circuit Breaker reimbursement program which provides additional state support for students with disabilities. School districts are eligible for a reimbursement of eligible costs of…

Throughout the history of publicly-funded voucher programs--enacted and proposed--the impact on taxpayers has been a recurring issue. As the nation's longest-running program, the Milwaukee Parent Choice Program (MPCP) provides an important case study. The fiscal impact of Milwaukee's program has evolved in very significant ways over its 18-year…

Throughout the history of publicly-funded voucher programs--enacted and proposed--the impact on taxpayers has been a recurring issue. As the nation's longest-running program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) provides an important case study. The fiscal impact of Milwaukee's program has evolved in very significant ways over its 18-year…

While there is a wealth of research on school finance equity and adequacy, and school finance theory clearly documents differences between the two concepts, no study has examined whether the reforms engendered by each approach actually differ in terms of resource distribution. This study examines the issues using district level data on expenditure…

Two proposals in the bill currently circulating to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seem to be shoe-ins for making their way into federal law. The impetus behind both proposals is to help poor kids by making sure that districts spend as much money on them as gets spent on rich kids. Going against the grain, the National Council on Teacher Quality…

Two years after the U.S. Department of Education awarded $650 million in Investing in Innovation grants, some of the winners are still facing financial uncertainty. Other grantees have also encountered problems with matching funds coming through, and some nonprofit grantees have been forced to contribute their own money to match the initial…

Michigan radically altered its school finance system in 1994. The new plan, called Proposal A, significantly increased state aid to the lowest-spending school districts and limited future increases in spending in the highest-spending ones, abolishing local discretion over school spending. I investigate the impact of Proposal A on the distribution…

A Maintenance of Effort (MOE) provision for higher education was first adopted in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 and was included as a requirement for states to participate in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The information in this article was presented before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on…