The American Rescue Plan was signed into law on March 11th and will send close to $6 billion to cities, counties, universities, school districts, and state agencies across Oregon. While the Department of Education and the U.S. Treasury are still developing the detailed spending criteria, funds are expected to be dispersed starting in mid-May. This…
Online charter schools have grown especially rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic. While online options are important for some students, online charter schools provide an inferior quality of education. Yet despite having much lower costs, such schools generally receive the same dollars per student in public funding – or nearly the same – as do traditional schools. All told, the report estimates that Californians waste $600 million per year by overpaying for the costs of online charter education….
This analysis reveals that charter school expansion caused major fiscal shortfalls in three California districts in 2016–17. When students transfer to charter schools, funding follows them, but districts retain fixed costs, forcing cuts to vital services. The California Charter School Act prevents school boards from considering financial impact when approving new charters. This report urges empowering officials to factor in fiscal and educational consequences before authorizing charter schools….
California’s charter school sector has grown over 600% in two decades, fueled by $2.5 billion in public funding for facilities. Despite ambitious goals, this report finds that funding decisions lack alignment with educational priorities. Schools are often built in areas that don’t need them and without regard for innovation or performance. The analysis urges policymakers to reconsider how facility funds are allocated to ensure they support high-quality, needed, and strategically placed educational options….
In 2015, Wisconsin debated a “right to work” law aimed at weakening private sector unions and lowering wages, in the hopes of luring outside manufacturers to move into the state. This report provides a detailed analysis both of the national data showing that “right to work” laws fail to spur employment growth and examining the particular economic bases of the Wisconsin state economy to show that these would not be positively affected by such a law….
Numerous states have debated or adopted laws that create special school districts, where low-performing public schools are taken over by the state and converted into privately-run charter schools. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of school takeover strategies that end up forcing a dumbed-down version of education on poor families instead of providing the funding that could guarantee them the same quality education that suburban parents insist on for their own children….
In many states, legislators have been encouraged to support so-called “Paycheck Protection” legislation. Such bills prohibit unions from deducting members’ dues without annual written authorization from each member – on the basis that unions may be engaged in political activity and workers should not be forced to contribute to those activities without their individual approval. This report is the definitive study showing what’s wrong with such laws….
Unfortunately for Oklahomans, so-called “right-to-work” never delivered on its promise. The law was promoted as a strategy for boosting manufacturing employment by convincing out-of-state production facilities to relocate to Oklahoma. Yet the facts show the exact opposite of what right-to-work supporters predicted. Not only has manufacturing employment failed to rise in Oklahoma, but, after increasing steadily the previous ten years, it has fallen steadily since….