As the U.S. continues to embrace a comprehensive plan for economic recovery, this article investigates the validity of the claim that investing in higher education will help restore state economic growth and prosperity. It presents the findings from a study that indicates that the most consistent predictors of state economic growth related to…

In recent years, the number of charter schools in Florida has doubled. We examine five years of data on students moving into these schools from the traditional public sector. We consider student attributes and the school and district contexts that they are leaving. The better students are performing relative to their peers, the less likely they…

This article examines three trends that challenge the provision of elementary and secondary education. Using the Commonwealth of Virginia as an example, this study compares national and state trends that threaten the stability and funding of public education. The following three trends are likely to present the greatest challenges to the…

Scholars and policymakers see improving teacher quality as a key way to improve student learning. While quality may be improved in a variety of ways for pre-service teachers, professional development is one of the few avenues by which quality can be improved for those teachers already in the teaching profession. But professional development, like…

Facing substantial financial pressure, many districts close schools in order to preserve solvency and improve student outcomes. Using a new longitudinal data set on all non-Cook County Illinois schools, we examine the determinants of high school closure decisions from 1986 through 2006. Our dataset combines information from a wide variety of…

High teacher turnover in large U.S. cities is a critical issue for schools and districts, and the students they serve; but surprisingly little work has been done to develop methodologies and standards that districts and schools can use to make reliable estimates of turnover costs. Even less is known about how to detect variations in turnover costs…

The purpose of this study was to develop a model that may be used to estimate the financial costs of teacher turnover in urban school districts. It is estimated that 50% of the beginning teachers leave the profession within the first five years on the job (Murname, Singer, Wilett, Kemple, and Olsen 1991; Colbert and Wolff 1992; Ingersoll 2003;…

This research investigates state finance policies for public elementary and secondary education using survey methodology. The purpose is to update the existing knowledge base in the field as well as to provide a compendium of finance and policy options that are being used across the states to finance school for lawmakers, educators and others.…

This article uses survival analysis to investigate the symptoms of fiscal distress that can lead to significant reductions in instructional expenditures by independent public school districts in the United States. We hypothesize that the likelihood of significant reductions in instructional expenditures is positively correlated with revenue…

Though charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon in American education, they have been in existence long enough now to allow for evaluation of operational outcomes relative to traditional public schools. Using a comprehensive data set for the State of Michigan that spans the years 1995 through 2006, this article aims to provide such an…

Nearly half a century of lottery scholarship has measured lottery tax incidence predominantly through either the Suits Index or regression analysis. The present study builds on historic lottery tax burden measurement to present a comprehensive set of tools to determine the tax incidence of individual games in addition to determining which lottery…

The goal of this study is to simultaneously explore resource allocation across schools within large urban school districts and across all schools within major metropolitan areas that include those urban districts in the state of Texas. This study uses a three-year panel, from 2005 to 2007, for Texas elementary schools in the Houston, Dallas,…

In Massachusetts, state aid to public schools fills the gap between a district's foundation budget and its required local contribution. Historic inequities in required local contributions and the resulting inequities in state aid across districts led to a call for education finance reform. Since 2007, the state has put in place a number of…

The purpose of this research was to address the public policy of adequacy by the creation of a Florida state-wide poverty index model to assist in the distribution of state and local dollars in funding public education. This poverty index model would measure the amount and severity of poverty in every public school within the state each year and…

This article reviews evidence regarding the intertemporal reliability of teacher rankings based on value-added methods. Value-added methods exhibit low reliability, yet are broadly supported by prominent educational researchers and are increasingly being used to evaluate and fire teachers. The article then presents a cost-effectiveness analysis…