Education

High-quality and equitable education opportunities, ranging across early childhood, K-12, technical education, higher education and apprenticeships, are pivotal for the economic prospects of working people and their children.  Disparities in education funding and the resulting inequities in the programs and services provided to children and adults of different incomes and races can determine the earning potential for someone’s entire life.  EARN groups analyze how state and local school taxes are raised and how education funding is parceled out, showing the impact of current education policies and suggesting reforms that can improve educational outcomes and economic conditions for working families.

Publications

Clearing the Jobs Pathway: Removing Non-Academic Barriers to Adult Student Completion

In order to reach the state’s workforce and economic goals, Indiana needs leadership to better align resources for adult students and to remove barriers that stand between them and post-secondary education and training programs. The state has made progress in tailoring academic and training programs to workforce demands and made steps toward incentivizing those programs with financial aid. And yet, too many of the would-be students who need these programs most never take the first step because their path is blocked by non-academic barriers. Many more start but stop or drop out permanently before completing degrees and credentials that would benefit their families and Indiana’s economy.

Support Adult English Language Education to Invest in Future

One in five Georgia children lives with at least one immigrant parent and nearly half of immigrants in Georgia struggle to speak English. When parents struggle to speak English, it not only hurts their ability to bring home higher pay to support their families, it also limits their involvement in their children’s education. This reduces the likelihood their children will succeed in school and one day reach their potential in the workforce.

More than 509,000 Georgia children have immigrant parents and 45 percent of immigrants in Georgia don’t speak English well. Yet Georgia’s English language programs enrolled only about 12,000 adults in 2016. Georgia is also one of just two states that ban undocumented immigrants from basic literacy and other adult education programs. This ban hurts children, including U.S. citizens, by making English language education inaccessible for their parents.

It is in the best interest of the state for lawmakers to improve the educational opportunities for immigrants because Georgia is likely to continue to diversify and attract newcomers from many different countries. The country’s immigrant population is projected to increase at double the rate of the U.S.-born population over the next five years. Georgia’s workforce will likely add more immigrants as the state continues to capture a large share of the nation’s population growth. Putting up unusual roadblocks to literacy and training programs and underfunding English language education undermines Georgia’s future workforce and its ability to compete.

Who Pays for School Property Tax Elimination? An Analysis of School Property Tax Burdens in Pennsylvania

Far from providing relief for working families, recent proposals to eliminate school property taxes in Pennsylvania would increase taxes on the middle class while sabotaging the chance to adequately fund Pennsylvania schools for middle- and low-income families.

This report provides the first estimates of the impact of property tax elimination proposals on families in Pennsylvania. Echoing recent debates about U.S. health care policy, our findings demonstrate that, in the case of proposed property tax elimination in Pennsylvania, the devil is in the details.