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Report
Why have revenue-strapped New England school districts been slow to turn to alternative funding sources?
During and even after the Great Recession, numerous popular press stories commented on the apparent growth of non-tax revenues in the face of school district budget deficits. But Downes and Killeen (2014) show that nationally the growth of non-traditional revenues has been far less than these articles may lead the reader to believe. This paper uses data from the New England states to assess the empirical content of some of the possible explanations of this slow growth. In New England, as in the rest of the nation, non-tax revenues per pupil have grown in real terms but have not become a more ...
Report
How the Student Loan Payment Pause Affected Borrowers’ Credit Access and Credit Use
This brief examines how the pandemic-related, 43-month moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accruals affected borrowers’ credit card limits and balances. The pause freed up an average of $280 a month for each of the 17 million student loan holders in active repayment, and it included a provision that erased previous defaults on student loans.
Report
Credit Access and the College-persistence Decision of Working Students: Policy Implications for New England
This study assesses the effects of involuntary job loss and access to credit card loans on working college students’ decision to either remain in school (college persistence) or drop out. The authors conducted the underlying analysis using national data, but their findings are especially relevant to New England, where higher education employs 4 percent of the region’s workforce—more than twice the national average. College persistence therefore carries implications not only for the individual students, but also for the vitality of the region’s labor market.
Working Paper
House price growth when children are teenagers: a path to higher earnings?
The United States has a long history of promoting homeownership through the mortgage interest tax deduction, and home equity constitutes an important source of borrowing collateral. There is a sizable body of work studying how fluctuating house prices impact consumer behavior. Since college tuition costs pose a large financial burden for many U.S. families, access to housing equity may impact decisions about pursuing a post-secondary education. This paper adds to the literature by using MSA-level house-price variation and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to study the link between ...
Working Paper
Estimating the Cost Function of Connecticut Public K–12 Education: Implications for Inequity and Inadequacy in School Spending
Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K–12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state’s school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds large disparities across districts in education costs and cost-adjusted spending. Districts with the largest enrollments, the highestschool-age-child-poverty rates, or the least amount of property wealth, on average, have the highest costs and ...
Working Paper
How to Design a State Education Aid Formula That Is Equitable, Adequate, and Politically Feasible: The Case of Connecticut
After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states have reformed their education aid policies. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a state education aid formula that can effectively address funding inequity and inadequacy while taking political feasibility into account. It first develops a measure of the gap between education cost and revenue capacity, both of which are estimated using school district characteristics that are outside the direct control of local officials at any given point in time. It then uses each district’s ...
Working Paper
The Roles of State Aid and Local Conditions in Elementary School Test-Score Gaps
Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or minority children score lower on states’ elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. Such test-score gaps serve as evidence of unequal educational opportunity. This study uses information from metropolitan areas and from school districts to understand ...
Working Paper
Job Loss, Credit Card Loans, and the College-persistence Decision of US Working Students
This study assesses the impact of involuntary job loss on college persistence by leveraging different job-loss timings relative to a student’s college enrollment decision. We find that job loss increases the probability that a working college student leaves college before attaining a degree, but access to short-term credit through credit card loans buffers this liquidity effect. By restricting credit supply to college students, the CARD Act of 2009 has inadvertently inhibited the ability of liquidity-constrained students to remain in college when their earnings unexpectedly fall, resulting ...
Working Paper
Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of School Funding Policies and External Fundraising
School districts across the US have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. Concurrently, schools are increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. We document both funding policies and fundraising efforts in Chicago Public Schools. We find that adoption of a weighted-student funding policy reallocated more dollars to schools with high shares of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, creating a policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap. Further, almost all schools raised external funds over the study ...
Journal Article
On the record: Texas students often lack skills, financial knowledge for college success
Jeff Webster is assistant vice president for research and analytical services for TG (Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp.), a nonprofit that promotes educational access and administers the Federal Family Education Loan Program. He has studied student loan default, debt burden and student retention.