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This document includes the "FY 2023 Annual Performance Report" (APR) and "FY 2025 Annual Performance Plan" (APP). The APR provides narrative and data on the Department of Education's (Department's) progress toward the strategic goals and objectives outlined in its "Fiscal Years [FYs] 2022-2026 Strategic Plan" (ED625432), and the APP details the Department's planned strategies and activities to achieve those strategic goals and objectives.

Families may choose to save for college or elementary and secondary education expenses using tax-advantaged qualified tuition programs (QTPs), also known as 529 plans. This report provides an overview of the mechanics of 529 plans and examines the specific tax advantages of these plans. Specifically, this report is structured to first compare "savings" and "prepaid" 529 plans and, second, to examine the income and gift tax treatment of 529 plans, using a stylized example to illustrate key concepts. The report also examines the tax treatment of rollovers and the interaction of 529 plans with other education tax benefits and looks at how 529 plans are treated in the federal needs analysis for financial aid. Finally, the report summarizes recent legislative changes.

Colleges and universities across the country must make significant capital investments to meet today's digital demands. Critical Connections explains why this challenge is more complex for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) than for predominantly White institutions (PWIs). It also details: (1) What makes the HBCU model so successful; (2) What can happen if states don't make this investment in HBCUs: Digital transformation can become a privilege reserved for the most selective and well-resourced colleges, universities, and communities; and (3) Why colleges have more agency advocating for capital funding than for operational funding--and how HBCUs can leverage those opportunities. In coming years, technology will be a critical tool to help colleges accelerate their student success efforts. Complete College America is committed to ongoing work with HBCUs and other Minority-Serving Institutions to secure adequate funding and facilitate the use of technology to maintain--and grow--their track record of success. With a strong financial base, these institutions can continue to lead the way in engaging students, from first contact through college completion and on to successful careers.

The NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments (NCSE) for fiscal year 2023 marks the 50th consecutive year that NACUBO has published a Study of the endowments of institutions of higher learning. It would not be an overstatement to say that the Study chronicled five decades of unparalleled change. The investment industry and endowment management have undergone profound change in thinking and practice--and that brings us to this document: a retrospective look at a select number of developments that have changed the course of endowment management. The value of this 50-year "look back" lies in understanding how annual NACUBO Studies have served as beacons calling attention to the emergence of new thinking and actions demanding to be noted, watched and considered for their implications for each institution's own endowment. Colleges and universities advanced into the vanguard of institutional endowment management out of necessity; now these endowments must continue to grow, stand the test of time and provide vital resources to support future generations. With the advent of digital currencies, the evolution of artificial intelligence and the sophistication of the financial markets ever deepening, no one can fathom what the next half-century holds for educational endowments. We do know that they will change. If they live up to the standards set by breakthroughs of the past 50 years, intergenerational equity should be secure.

Despite growing evidence on the impacts of the climate crisis on access to education and learning outcomes, there is a clear gap in identifying the additional costs the climate crisis imposes on education systems. Further, there is little evidence demonstrating the financial and socio-economic returns on specific climate-smart investment in education. To help address this research gap, Part 1 of this report explores the current data and literature with the goal of collating key findings, identifying gaps, and crowding-in further research. To support efforts to build climate-smart education systems across the world, Part 2 of this paper proposes a Climate and Environment Intervention Matrix (CEIM), a tool intended for policymakers, planners, donors, and other education stakeholders that can be used to understand the cost implications of building climate-smart education systems. Part III includes considerations for how governments and their education sector partners can advance the implementation of those systems and how the wider research community can fill the priority data gaps.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress allocated $189.5 billion for a new Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. The arrival of this federal aid was a lifeline for schools attempting to serve students amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding was distributed in a very different manner, and with very different rules and requirements, than we see with other forms of federal and state education aid. This report explores the most significant ways in which this funding differed from school districts' standard funding allocations, and what those differences can teach policymakers both about how to evaluate the ESSER investment and about how to structure and manage future school funding distributions. Our conclusions are informed by in-depth interviews with a number of district and state officials involved in administering and using ESSER dollars.

The Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education) was founded to bring the business community together to end the global education crisis. GBC-Education seeks to increase investments in education from the private sector. In 2019, GBC-Education began developing a suite of resources and services to support partners in its network in making more-strategic investments in education that are aligned with their goals for corporate social responsibility and their environmental, social, and governance strategy. This report describes part of GBC-Education's work with four member companies: Schneider Electric, HP Inc., SAP, and Ancestry.

Quality non-degree credentials can lead to good jobs and family-sustaining wages. But not all non-degree credentials lead to good outcomes -- and when they don't, they entrench economic inequalities that impact people of color and women. National Skills Coalition's new report "The Non-Degree Credential Quality Imperative" encourages state policymakers to invest in quality NDCs; shares how we've worked with states to define, measure, and track quality; and offers takeaways for how to advance quality assurance so that policymakers feel confident in investing in non-degree credentials, students have confidence in their training programs, and employers know which programs effectively prepare people for careers.

In a joint report released today, The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) and The Education Trust-West urge California lawmakers to keep their promise in ensuring educational equity for BIPOC students and students with the greatest need by investing in Cal Grant Reform starting in the 2023-24 state budget. "Investing Equitably in California College Affordability" outlines specific steps policymakers should take to ensure the most vulnerable students receive adequate financial aid to cover the cost of attending California colleges through intentional budgetary actions that would implement already passed reforms to the state's most critical financial aid investment one year earlier.

Prior to the pandemic, a survey of Pennsylvania parents found that for every child that was enrolled in an afterschool program, four more would participate if more programs were available. The pandemic has only emphasized the need for out-of-school time (OST) programs as students across Pennsylvania and the country cope with learning loss and increased social and emotional needs in the wake of the crisis. Despite the need for more programming, the only ongoing dedicated public source of funding for OST that is available statewide in Pennsylvania is the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21stCCLC) program. This brief examines Pennsylvania's growing need for dedicated state funding to supplement the federal 21stCCLC grants, summarizes research evidence of the value of OST programming, identifies existing quality standards available to guide investments to high quality OST programs, and reviews how other states provide supplemental funding to OST that could serve as models to Pennsylvania.

The community schools strategy transforms a school into a place where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning and healthy development. As partners, they organize in- and out-of-school resources, supports, and opportunities so that young people thrive. A growing number of states are investing in community schools as a strategy to address long-standing social inequities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a review of state American Rescue Plan Act plans, as well as state legislative and state education agency websites and other online resources, this report describes community school initiatives in eight states. The report highlights three potential approaches to state support for community schools: (1) ongoing support through school funding formulas; (2) competitive grant funding; and (3) capacity-building supports (such as certification processes).

The "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) movement against Israel is one of the faces of anti-Semitism in the United States. It threatens not only Jewish students and scholars but also the political neutrality of the university. The BDS movement is particularly concentrated in higher education and creates an environment of academic politicization to the detriment of academic freedom, freedom of speech, and constructive civil discourse. This report finds that the BDS movement's success on campus is mixed, while its broader movement is well-funded and growing in influence. This report expands beyond previous work on the BDS movement by examining its constitutive student groups in the context of its off-campus support organizations and funding. BDS in universities must be understood as one component of a larger left-wing social justice movement that politicizes higher education. This report first describes the Palestinian origins and development of the campus BDS movement, before examining its rates of success and failure nationwide from 2005 to the Fall 2022 semester. Three campus case studies then examine how pro-BDS initiatives are propagated, how such anti-Israel measures affect anti-Semitism on campus, and how university administrations address the issue. The second half of this report examines the off-campus organizations that enable BDS student activism by means of training, legal assistance, and funding. This report also notes ties between BDS organizations and terrorism.

In June 2021, the Minnesota Legislature appropriated significant investments in child care, using $537 million in Child Care and Development Funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARP). Investments included: $304 million in direct payments to providers through Child Care Stabilization Grants; $22.5 million for Child Care Facility Grants for facility improvements, minor renovations, and related equipment and services; and $1 million for the Retaining Early Educators through Attaining Incentives Now (REETAIN) program. This money was temporary and provided much needed relief, as well as a unique opportunity to try novel approaches to solving a variety of challenges that exist in early education. The goal of this project is to understand the impact of ARP funds on increasing wages and retention of the early childhood education workforce to inform future investments. This brief explores the initial impact of that federal funding on Minnesota's child care industry. Ongoing analysis will further determine the impacts on the early childhood workforce; an in-depth report will be forthcoming in 2024.

This brief describes the components found in magnet schools that are both racially diverse and educationally effective. It also outlines four evidence-based policy recommendations that can inform federal, state, and local efforts to help design, implement, and sustain effective magnet schools that foster integrated learning and positive student outcomes. These include: (1) Reinstating federal guidance to states and localities about evidence-based approaches to support school diversity; (2) Expanding federal investments in magnet schools and using them to leverage school diversity and student success; (3) Expanding strategic state, regional, and local investments in magnet schools in ways that support school diversity; and (4) Supporting school-level strategies that promote both integration and student success. This brief is based upon and updates an earlier report (ED614373), which can be found online at https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/advancing-integration-equity-magnet-schools-report.

By the time children in low- and middle-income countries start primary school, large socioeconomic disparities are evident in children's learning and development. Both pre-primary and home environments can play important roles in influencing school readiness and can contribute to disparities in early childhood development, but there is limited evidence on their relative roles in low- and middle-income countries. This paper examines how pre-primary quality, stimulation at home, and early childhood development vary by socioeconomic status for pre-primary students in the Arab Republic of Egypt. The results demonstrate substantial socioeconomic inequality in stimulation at home, more so than in pre-primary quality and inputs, although there is variation in the degree of inequality across different dimensions of pre-primary quality. "Double inequality" is observed, where students with less stimulating home environments experience slightly lower quality pre-primary inputs. There are particularly large pre-primary inequities in structural quality (physical environment) and less inequity in process quality (pedagogy). These results suggest that targeted investments in pre-primary education in Egypt are necessary to reduce inequality in school readiness but are likely insufficient to close the socioeconomic status gap in children's development. Investing in interventions to improve vulnerable children's home learning environments, as well as investing in quality pre-primary, is critical to address disparities in children's development. [This paper is a product of the World Bank's Education Global Practice. The study is the result of a collaboration between the World Bank and the Ministry of Education and Technical Education of Egypt (MOETE). It was funded by the UK Strategic Partnership for Egypt's Inclusive Growth Trust Fund and the World Bank.]

Schools should be safe places for young people, educators, school staff, and community members, and policies and practices can help create learning environments where kids thrive. Gun violence in U.S. schools has prompted calls for increased school safety measures; however, which policies contribute to safe school environments is often a topic of debate. How can schools create safe environments while also fostering welcoming, equitable school climates that support growth, learning, and community? To help Colorado policymakers and school communities answer this question, the Colorado Children's Campaign has identified and compiled research on strategies that are supported by strong evidence. While school safety can be defined broadly as freedom from physical, emotional, and psychological violence, this brief focuses on promoting freedom from bodily harm in a school setting. Strategies that support students' well-being and prevent bullying, fighting, the use of weapons, and other types of violence can contribute to reducing harm. [Leslie Colwell, Megan Ives, Erica Manoatl, and Jackie Zubrzycki contributed to this report.]

In this brief, the authors illustrate New Hampshire and Vermont's different responses to supporting the early childhood education and care sector during the COVID-19 pandemic and examine the limited publicly available data on pandemic relief funds through the lens of the interstate Upper Valley region. While data limitations preclude the authors from identifying which child care pandemic relief programs worked best and for whom, the authors find spatial and program type differences in relief receipt. Using data from interviews with early childhood educators in the Upper Valley, the authors identify the role that temporary relief funds have played in keeping the sector afloat during the pandemic. While relief funds served the role of "keeping the doors open" for many providers, these short-term funds are unable to address the deep-seated challenges of the sector's unsustainable economic model, a challenge that predated the pandemic and has worsened since. The authors conclude by identifying important policy steps to support the sector in New Hampshire, Vermont, and beyond. [This brief is part of the "Early Childhood in the Upper Valley Series." For the prior brief in this series, "Why Interstate Child Care Scholarship Policy Choices Matter in the Upper Valley: "You Can Only Charge the Families so Much." National Issue Brief #167," see ED629671.]

If the state of California finds the funds, the Cal Grant Reform Act--as enacted in the 2022 Budget Act--is to be implemented in 2024 to support hundreds of thousands of Californians in affording, accessing, and succeeding in higher education. Instead, the state has proposed adding more funding to the less equitable Middle Class Scholarship (MCS) program. This Equity Alert provides an overview of why Cal Grant Reform is needed; describes the limitations of the Middle Class Scholarship program in serving low-income, BIPOC, and community college students in California; and provides recommendations that state policymakers can act on this year to advance equity-centered financial aid reforms.

Funded by the H-1B visa program, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) provided funding to 46 grantees across the country to expand registered apprenticeship into new sectors, such as healthcare, and to populations underrepresented in apprenticeships. DOL commissioned an evaluation of the AAI grants to build evidence about the effectiveness of registered apprenticeship for apprentices and employers. This report presents findings of the employer return-on-investment (ROI) sub-study. The primary data source is an Employer Survey administered to 68 employers that hired apprentices supported by an AAI grant. Each employer was asked to describe one of their apprenticeship programs in detail; all together, these programs represented 2,854 apprentices. The survey was deployed between March 2020 and October 2020, towards the end of the 5-year AAI grant period. The report documents the costs, benefits, net benefits, and ROI estimates that AAI employers experienced by investing in apprenticeship programs. The report includes information on costs and benefits during the apprenticeship program period, as well as projections of benefits for up to 5 years after apprentices completed their apprenticeship.

Education funding in the United States relies primarily on state and local resources, with just a tiny share of total revenues allotted by the federal government. Most analyses of the primary school finance metrics--equity, adequacy, effort, and sufficiency--raise serious questions about whether the existing system is living up to the ideal of providing a sound education equitably to all children at all times. Districts in high-poverty areas, which serve larger shares of students of color, get less funding per student than districts in low-poverty areas, which predominantly serve white students, highlighting the system's inequity. School districts in general--but especially those in high-poverty areas--are not spending enough to achieve national average test scores, which is an established benchmark for assessing adequacy. Efforts states make to invest in education vary significantly. And the system is ill-prepared to adapt to unexpected emergencies. These challenges are magnified during and after recessions. Following the Great Recession that began in December 2007, per-student education revenues plummeted and did not return to pre-recession levels for about eight years. The recovery in per-student revenues was even slower in high-poverty districts. This report combines new data on funding for states and for districts by school district poverty level, and over time, with evidence documenting the positive impacts of increasing investment in education to make a case for overhauling the school finance system. It calls for reforms that would ensure a larger role for the federal government to establish a robust, stable, and consistent school funding plan that channels sufficient additional resources to less affluent students in good times and bad. Furthermore, spending on public education should be retooled as an economic stabilizer, with increases automatically kicking in during recessions. Such a program would greatly mitigate cuts to public education as budgets are depleted, and also spur aggregate demand to give the economy a needed boost.

In 2018 the Department for Education published "Supporting excellent school resource management: strategy." This set out the Department's commitment to helping schools improve outcomes for pupils by making every pound count and getting the best value from their resources. This strategy underpins the School Resource Management (SRM) Portfolio of support from the department. The is a suite of tools which aims to help schools and trusts save money on day-to-day costs. In September 2021, BMG were commissioned to conduct independent qualitative research to evaluate the use and impact as a result of engaging with this suite of tools: namely the Schools Financial Benchmarking (SFB), the View My Financial Insights tool (VMFI), and the Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) training course and accompanying resources. The specific research objectives for this qualitative project were: (1) What specific decisions and actions have schools and academy trusts taken because of their use of either of the two financial benchmarking tools or ICFP training; (2) What is the broad balance of costs and benefits of these indirect support strands; (3) What have those decisions and actions led to; (4) Including the estimated impact on school or academy trust expenditure; (5) What are best-case scenario impacts on expenditure of using the two indirect support strands; and (6) Are there ways to improve or maximise the contribution of each strand to school or academy trust expenditure? [This report was written by BMG Research.]

In 2021, California made major new investments to advance its commitment to early childhood education through universal preschool. One important investment was extending state funding for transitional kindergarten (TK), previously just for older 4-year-olds, to all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. To ensure the quality of new preschool investments, California must recruit and prepare a sufficient number of qualified teachers in TK and other early childhood programs--a challenge given the rapid expansion of the program. This challenge is even greater during the COVID-19 pandemic, when school districts and early childhood programs are facing significant staffing shortages. This report provides estimates of how many TK teachers California will need through 2025-26 and discusses potential pathways to support a diverse, well-prepared workforce, both in TK and in other early childhood programs. The authors also offer recommendations that state policymakers could follow to stabilize, support, and expand the broader early childhood workforce and to build pathways for racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse educators. [For the Research Brief, see ED622845.]

This report is a response to congressional requests for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to identify, synthesize, and explain the core components of the workforce skills gap discourse and, to the extent possible, explore and clarify evidence on the existence of skills gaps. The report acknowledges that the skills gap label is often applied to several different circumstances and conditions, and it offers a discussion of the varied meanings associated with the term. The report attempts to shed light on the nature and existence of various types of skills misalignments and explores their potential policy implications. The report presents a limited review of indicators that are commonly cited as evidence of the existence of skill misalignments. These include broad indicators examining job openings and hires, employer wage responses to unfilled jobs, educational credentials possessed in relation to those required, and the adequacy of measurable foundational skills among current (and future) workers. The report notes that these indicators, which measure trends of relevance to the skills gap debate, do not clearly suggest that widespread misalignments exist. At the same time, this review cannot rule out misalignments as a possibility. The report notes as well that available existing broad indicators have limitations, some indicators may be imprecise, and some indicators are generated through imperfect research. With regard to a more narrow examination of skill shortages affecting particular occupations or fields in which there is an undersupply of credentialed workers, or in which work demands may be changing rapidly, the report notes there is more agreement about the existence of some misalignments. The report highlights illustrative examples of fields in which evidence points to shortages. Also discussed is the complexity associated with isolating the causes when occupations, employers, and regions face difficulty in filling positions. That is, it is difficult to attribute hiring challenges to a skills shortage when there are often many other plausible explanations for hiring challenges. Throughout the report, there is discussion of enduring challenges that complicate policymaking in this arena. One is that the skills gap label encompasses a series of somewhat separate (but interrelated) issues, and it is not clear that there is a common problem definition or consensus about what may need to be addressed. Further, it can be hard to reach agreement about respective responsibilities of workers, employers, and government in ensuring the acquisition of skills. While there are numerous federal investments promoting a skilled workforce, there is no clear agreement about whether, or the extent to which, the different skills-related challenges being addressed by federal policies need to be thought of as a continuum and addressed in an interconnected manner.

Public school districts across California struggle to upkeep and modernize their school facilities. For many districts, aging inventory, coupled with limited capital funding opportunities, has led to school facilities with ballooning deferred maintenance problems and classrooms that do not appropriately support modern instructional practices. These realities also work against California's priorities for high quality, equitable education, childhood health, racial justice, and climate resiliency. In this paper, we investigate adequacy and equity of investment in California's public school facilities. By using a standards-based framework to understand patterns of investment levels, we gauge the likely "good stewardship" of these physical school assets. We look at both "maintenance & operations" (M&O) spending and capital investment by local K-12 public school districts across the state for the years 2009-2019.

The United States' child population is becoming increasingly racially diverse, and the proportion of children identified with disabilities is on an upward trajectory, but persistent disparities in outcomes based on race and disability status across education systems endure. At the intersection of these populations are children of color with disabilities, who experience greater obstacles along their education pathways and poorer academic outcomes than their nondisabled and/or white peers. For this report, the authors interviewed families of children of color with disabilities to understand their experiences with education, recognizing these families as experts in their own lives. While every interview was unique, the stories of these families illustrate the challenges many families of color with children with disabilities face in accessing high-quality services. Despite differences in geography, family structure, and the types of disabilities that their children have, the problems these families face -- and their ideas for how to make things better -- were consistent. [Funding for this report was provided by Easterseals.]

This toolkit helps funders and NGOs to address the challenges they face in assessing organisational development needs. It was developed in partnership with five leading Indian intermediary organisations: Dasra, the Dhwani Foundation, Samhita Social Ventures, Sattva, and toolbox INDIA Foundation. All have extensive experience advising NGOs on their organisational development needs. [For "Organisational Development Assessment Guide," see ED622362.]