At CRPE, our previous finance research centered on how funding systems could support the growth of charter schools and portfolio-style governance, with a strong emphasis on equity, transparency, and flexibility in resource allocation. We examined how traditional formulas often disadvantaged schools of choice and studied weighted or student-based funding models that might better match dollars to student needs.
Today, our focus has shifted to how education finance can help schools recover and adapt in the face of disruption. We study how pandemic-era funding was used, what lessons districts learned, and how the expiration of those funds creates new fiscal challenges. We also examine how shifting federal priorities—such as efforts to scale back or restructure education funding—affect schools’ capacity to innovate, sustain supports, and equitably serve all students. Across this evolution, our commitment remains the same: to understand how funding systems can be designed to meet student needs while enabling schools to respond to change.
The Council of Chief State Schools Officers is meeting this week to discuss rural education. While worries about America’s public education system often focus on large cities, rural districts educate millions of American students, and they do so with less support and attention than their urban and suburban counterparts.
In any city, there are plenty of neighborhoods with few or no good schools. For the students and families in these areas, even just one or two soundly conceived and well-run charter schools can make a difference.
Every sector of the U.S. economy is working on ways to deliver services in a more customized manner. In the near future, cancer treatment plans will be customized to each patient based on sophisticated genetic data and personal health histories.
A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that the Mark Zuckerberg-backed Pershing Square Fund is investing $6 million in Bridge Academies, a private school chain in Kenya that serves more than 126,000 kids at a cost of $6 per student per month.
This paper argues that district-wide systems changes are necessary to encourage and free up schools to innovate, in order to implement personalized learning at scale and meet the challenges of Common Core.