Research Grants

This study investigates Pennsylvania’s court-ordered school finance reform to understand the political and legislative processes that follow a landmark ruling declaring the state’s funding system unconstitutional. Using a qualitative case study design, the team will conduct semi-structured interviews with key policymakers and content analysis of legislative transcripts and media coverage. The findings will illuminate the dynamics of politics and power involved in translating judicial mandates into policy.

This study evaluates California’s School Facility Program to understand how the state’s current funding formula contributes to infrastructural disrepair and funding inequities across districts. The research uses a scalable data model that links building age and square footage with local property wealth to generate estimates of district-level facility investment needs. By demonstrating that infrastructure gaps are driven primarily by unequal fiscal capacity rather than building age, the study indicates a need for standardized data systems and equity-centered funding reforms that target state resources based on a district’s actual facility conditions and its ability to raise local revenue.

This study analyzes the gap between Massachusetts’s census-based funding estimates and actual special education enrollment to understand how these disparities create mounting fiscal pressure for local districts. Using quantitative regression and quasi-experimental methods, the research tracks rising autism identification and the high costs of out-of-district placements using longitudinal administrative data through 2024. The findings underscore the importance of aligning state funding with actual service costs and local fiscal capacity to protect the budgets of districts least able to absorb sudden cost spikes.

This study investigates how Washington’s 2018 levy lid reform and state special education funding caps influence district decisions regarding student identification and spending. Using a difference-in-differences regression analysis, researchers examined administrative data from 300 districts between 2010 and 2024 to track how shifts in the local funding mix affect school behavior. The results demonstrate that restricted local flexibility can suppress identification rates, highlighting the need for funding models that reflect actual costs and protect service delivery from changes in revenue sources.

This study evaluates Nevada’s transition to the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan to understand the factors shaping a district’s capacity to distribute resources in alignment with new weights based on student need. The research uses a sequential mixed-methods design, beginning with qualitative interviews of administrators followed by a descriptive and summative analysis of district and school budgets. The study will provide specific insights into the implementation challenges of weighted funding, particularly for rural districts and those serving high populations of English Learners.

This study analyzes the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) reform to understand how major school funding formula changes impact district revenues and resource allocations in its initial years. The research design involves a quantitative analysis of district-level fiscal data to track the transition from the previous funding model to the newly established weighted student funding system. By providing early evidence of the reform’s implementation, the study will help policymakers assess whether the new formula effectively targets resources to students with the greatest needs.

This study investigates state-level social safety net policies to understand how varying eligibility requirements and generosity levels unintentionally impact school district funding through direct certification of low-income students. The design involves creating a catalog of social safety net programs and comparing direct certification rates to American Community Survey poverty data across multiple states. By highlighting the connection between social policies and education finance, the study underscores the need for cross-agency coordination and integrated data systems to ensure funding formulas effectively direct resources to students with the greatest needs.

This study investigates the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) to understand how large-scale pay-for-performance bonuses impact teacher retention, mobility, and student achievement in rural and hard-to-staff campuses. The project uses difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, analyzing linked student-teacher administrative records and individual-level bonus payment data from the Texas Education Agency. The study aims to determine if compensating differentials can improve equity in access to high-performing teachers and quantify the effectiveness of individualized incentives in the teacher labor market.

This study examines Washington’s “levy swap” reforms to understand how transitioning from local to state property taxes impacts taxpayer equity across diverse school districts. By matching records for millions of individual properties with local tax rates, the research team calculates the true average tax bill to see if lower-income families or specific racial groups are paying a higher percentage of their money toward schools. Finding that current structures remain regressive, the study suggests state-level policy interventions, such as income-based exemptions, are necessary to improve the fiscal fairness of education funding.

This study investigates how state policies that cap local revenue affect funds raised by “hidden” school-supporting non-profits like PTAs and education foundations. Using a new national longitudinal database of IRS records, the team applied a difference-in-differences design to compare districts in states that implemented revenue limits with those that did not. The findings show that private fundraising offsets less than six percent of lost public revenue, highlighting that such caps can encourage unequal, hard-to-track funding without sustaining necessary educational resources.

This study investigates school district general fund balances and state-imposed statutory limits to understand how these reserves cushion districts against spending volatility during fiscal shocks. The research uses a nationwide analysis of state laws alongside regression models using a proprietary dataset of thousands of districts to examine the relationship between reserves and financial risk factors. By proving that higher fund balances stabilize spending during aid cuts, the study highlights disparities for high-poverty districts and indicates that state support would help disadvantaged districts to build adequate fiscal cushions.

This study investigates Texas’s multi-indicator at-risk model to determine if a state-administered composite measure identifies low-income students more comprehensively and sustainably than traditional federal income proxies. The researchers use a three-stage design merging district-level data to map identification overlaps, benchmark agreement with Census estimates, and evaluate the administrative feasibility for other states. The study aims to provide evidence to inform more inclusive funding formulas that capture dimensions of disadvantage often missed by household income alone.

This study develops an alternative low-income student identification index designed for the Mississippi and Tennessee funding formulas. Drawing on six domains of access, including food, childcare, housing, and broadband, and using both federal and state-level data sources, the study creates a multidimensional index to replace narrow income-based indicators. Its significance lies in offering a replicable, equity-centered framework that enables states to capture the material realities of poverty across varied geographic and community contexts without requiring costly new data investments.

This study provides causal evidence on how the eleven percent statutory cap on special education weighted-funding within the Oregon State School Fund influences district revenue and student services. The researcher will use a kink regression discontinuity design to analyze a twelve-year panel of district-level Oregon administrative data, examining district-level expenditures, and aggregate student achievement scores. This study aims to inform the 2027 Oregon legislative session’s debate on funding caps and offer insights for other states managing special education costs.

This study compares Michigan’s current binary economically disadvantaged indicator with alternative measures that capture poverty depth and persistence. Researchers will use linked administrative and geographic data from three diverse Michigan counties to conduct correlation and regression analyses of income-based, program-based, and neighborhood-based metrics. This study illustrates how states can utilize existing data to move beyond binary poverty measures and design more differentiated funding weights that account for the depth and duration of student hardship.

This study provides causal evidence on how diverse state school facility finance reforms, such as fully state-funded systems or matching grants, perform in practice to improve equity and adequacy in school infrastructure. The researchers use a stacked event-study design to analyze a new multi-state panel dataset on capital expenditures and facility policies covering 1986–2022. This study shifts the research focus from overall reform effects to the specific funding mechanisms that most effectively reduce infrastructure disparities.

This study examines how varied state English Learners (EL) funding models, including flat weights, tiered systems, and resource-based allocations, shape local resource decisions and conceptions of adequacy. The research uses a cross-state comparative qualitative approach featuring semi-structured interviews with state and district leaders in Michigan, Texas, Massachusetts, and Delaware. The study will generate the first systematic evidence on how structural differences in state funding enable or constrain a district’s capacity to serve the growing EL population.

This study evaluates how states can design capital funding systems, including grants and bond authorization rules, to better align resources with facility needs in disadvantaged communities. The researchers will develop a fifty-state typology and conduct in-depth case studies in ten states, analyzing original data on actual funding flows and local bond elections. This work moves beyond aggregate federal data to reveal the actual distributional consequences of state infrastructure policies for students in property-poor districts.

This study investigates how state funding incentives introduced by Texas House Bill 3 (HB3) shape district adoption of dual language immersion (DLI) programs and subsequent resource allocation. The research team will apply a difference-in-discontinuities framework at the “Rule of 20” English Learner (EL) student threshold and a staggered difference-in-differences design using twelve years of Texas administrative records. This study is significant for determining whether formula weights are sufficient to scale effective EL instructional models or if workforce constraints, such as teacher certification gaps, remain a binding barrier.

This study investigates the rapid expansion of universal school choice programs, including ESAs and vouchers, and its implications for the equity and stability of school funding. The project involves data collection and policy landscape mapping across states with universal choice, drawing on publicly available reports of how program funds have been distributed geographically. This study will produce a series of state-specific datasets that provide the research community with new empirical resources to understand the long-term fiscal consequences of school choice programs for public education.

This study examines whether state school finance reforms increase district budget volatility by shifting reliance from stable property taxes to erratic state revenues and provides the first nationwide description of how education finance volatility varies across states, districts, and revenue and spending categories. The researchers use a two-stage instrumental variable model and a deviation from trend measure to analyze F-33 finance survey data from 1986 to 2024. The study’s findings will help policymakers design countercyclical measures like education-specific rainy day funds to protect school services during downturns.

This study evaluates the impact of North Dakota House Bill 1199, which provided $80 million for regional Area Technical Centers (ATCs) through competitive grants. The project uses a mixed-methods approach featuring a difference-in-differences analysis of course enrollment data and a qualitative case study of cross-sector collaboration at the Career Impact Academy. The research investigates whether regional capital improvements and industry matching requirements provide a cost-effective strategy for expanding career pathways in sparsely populated, rural states.