Prioritizing School Finance Equity during an Economic Downturn: Recommendations for State Policy Makers

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
David S. Knight ◽  
Nail Hassairi ◽  
Christopher A. Candelaria ◽  
Min Sun ◽  
Margaret L. Plecki
Keyword(s):  
School Finance ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Finance Equity ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
State Budgets ◽  
State Finance ◽  
Funding Programs ◽  
K 12

Abstract State budgets temporarily crashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown, placing education funding at risk. To demonstrate implications for school finance, we show that (1) school districts are racially segregated along class lines; (2) higher-poverty districts receive a greater share of funds from state, as opposed to local sources, making them especially vulnerable during economic downturns; and (3) many states made across-the-board K-12 budget reductions following the Great Recession, but those cuts disproportionately impacted high-poverty districts. A decade later, state legislators may face similar fiscal challenges. Instead of enacting acrossthe-board cuts, states can identify specific funding programs that already benefit lower-poverty districts or wealthier students. We demonstrate how this approach would work under different state finance models and offer recommendations for state policy makers.

Lessons learned from a search for common ground

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Rick Hess ◽  
Pedro Noguera
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Social And Emotional Learning ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Education Leaders ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Common Understanding

In 2020, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera engaged in a long-running correspondence that tackled many of the biggest questions in education — including topics like school choice, equity and diversity, testing, privatization, the achievement gap, social and emotional learning, and civics. They sought to unpack their disagreements, better understand one another’s perspectives, and seek places of agreement or points of common understanding. Their correspondence appears in their book, A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K-12 Education (Teachers College Press, 2021). In this article, they reflect on the exercise, what they learned from it, and what lessons it might offer to educators, education leaders, researchers, and policy makers.

The Great Depression and the Great Recession in Interwar Greece and Today: A comparison

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Lazaretou
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek Crisis ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Nominal Anchor

AbstractThe past Greek crisis experience is more or less terra incognita. In all historical empirical studies Greece is systematically neglected or included only sporadically in their cross-country samples. In the national literature too there is little on this topic. In this paper we use the 1930s crisis as a useful testing ground to compare the two crises episodes, ‘then’ and ‘now’; to detect differences and similarities and discuss the policy facts with the ultimate aim to draw some ‘policy lessons’ from history. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to study the Greek crisis experience across the two historical episodes. Comparisons with the interwar period show that the recent economic downturn was faster, larger and more severe than during the early 1930s. More importantly, analysing the determinants of the two crises, we conclude that Greece’s problems arose from its inability to credibly adhere to a nominal anchor.

scholarly journals Social origins and the decision to leave university during the Great recession: the role of the field of study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loris Vergolini ◽  
Eleonora Vlach
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Drop Out Rate

The recent economic downturn has had profound influences on contemporary European societies. This paper analyzes how the Great Recession affected the drop-out rate among university students in Italy, and whether their chosen field of study moderated its effect. To examine the potential long-term effects of this economic downturn on social inequality, we also explore whether students from less-advantaged families who enrolled in prestigious fields were those pushed out from university in disproportionally high numbers. We investigate the interacting influence of the economic crisis, social inequalities and field of study on drop-out rate using data from the Istat “Survey on the educational and occupational paths of high school graduates” in two cohorts of university students (one who attended university prior to and one during the Great Recession). Results obtained from propensity score matching show that the economic crisis had a negative effect on university participation, which was however less strong for Medicine students. Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds in the most remunerative fields of study (those leading to liberal professions), tended to leave university more often than their well-off peers.

Educational Reform: What Have Federal and State Policy Makers Done?

2010 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Rosalyn Anstine Templeton ◽  
Karen Huffman ◽  
Celia E. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Educational Reform ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Policy Makers

The Benefits of Long-Term Environmental Research, Friendships, and Boiled Peanuts

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn E. Gaiser
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Student ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
University Of Georgia ◽  
Integrative Research ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University

The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has enabled me to conduct more broadly relevant science by addressing questions within an interdisciplinary framework and to unravel the causes for surprising ecological phenomena through persistent studies and collaborations. Educational opportunities within the LTER program have connected me to students from grades K–12 to graduate levels in new ways from the field to the classroom, across places from Florida to Alaska, and among disciplines in a collaborative setting. The audience for my research expanded as a consequence of my experiences in the LTER program, and I have learned how to more effectively communicate integrative research to large audiences of scientists, policy-makers, and the public, often through nontraditional media. The LTER program is foremost a network of people, and I have found that science evolves most successfully when ideas and information are shared voluntarily across backgrounds, disciplines, and cultures in a network of cultivated, trusting relationships. The Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) is the LTER site where I am currently the principal investigator, but the LTER program has been a part of my life for most of my career. My experiences in the LTER program began in the early 1990s when I was a graduate student at the University of Georgia, where the Coweeta (CWT) LTER site is based. Although I was not formally a part of CWT, many of my friends and professors were, so the program influenced my development as a scientist. I remember my first field trip to CWT, led by Gene Helfman and Judy Meyer, and the fun of snorkeling in mountain streams where we camped and conducted a few experiments, including examining the effects of rapid consumption of s’mores and boiled peanuts on preschool children (Judy and Gene’s kids). LTER-related activities wove in and out of my graduate student experience, and the rewards of sharing of ideas, data, friendships, and boiled peanuts created in me a lifelong commitment to persistent, collaborative science. This sense of fulfillment, of being part of something larger, was reinforced at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), where I conducted my research.

The Parental Perspective over the Use of iPads in Primary and Middle Years of Schooling

2020 ◽  
pp. 773-786
Author(s):  
Abdullah Ismail ◽  
Anthony Cashin
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Educational Paradigm ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Published Research

Apple's iPad and other forms of tablet are reportedly gaining increasing popularity within the academic premises. Most of the published research on this topic has highly admired the positive role and impact of iPads on teaching and learning practices, as if an exogenous technological induction in any local context would essentially revolutionize and transform the whole educational paradigm; however, some recent publications also highlight the parental and policy-makers' concerns over the undesired consequences of technological obsession in educational development. The current study aims at bringing a balanced view on this crucially important topic. The study employs mixed methods research and it uses Ajman Academy, a renowned K-12 institution in the United Arab Emirates, as a case study. This research concludes that due to the relative immaturity of these young children, they cannot be left alone to make their own technological choices. Hence, adopting an over-ambitious approach in terms of technological adoption, without properly understanding the nuances and complexities of a local context; may possibly put these children in a vulnerable situation, and thus likely exposed to many unintended and undesired consequences.

Financial Incentives in Vertical Diffusion: The Variable Effects of Obama’s Race to the Top Initiative on State Policy Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-212
Author(s):  
William G. Howell ◽  
Asya Magazinnik
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Race To The Top ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Vertical Diffusion ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
General Importance ◽  
Federal Initiatives

A substantial body of empirical work documents the influence of federal monies on state policy making. Less attention, however, has been paid to the conditioning effects of states’ prior financial health. Nearly always, apportioned monies cover only a fraction of the costs of federal policy reforms. The capacity of states to deploy supplementary resources, therefore, may inform the willingness of states to comply with the federal government’s policy objectives. Focusing on Barack Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) initiative, we present new evidence that state responses to federal initiatives that carry financial rewards systematically vary with the amount of resources already on hand. States that survived the Great Recession with their education budgets largely intact, we find, tended to implement more RttT reforms overall, and especially more reforms that required substantial up-front financial commitments. These patterns of policy adoptions can be meaningfully attributed to RttT, are not the result of either prior or ancillary policy trends, and speak to the general importance of accounting for what states already have, above and beyond what the federal government is willing to offer, when studying the financial incentives of vertical diffusion.

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