Category: Stephen Owens

Student working on test

What Are School Vouchers?

Vouchers Overview Georgia legislators have debated educational vouchers since the 1950s.[1] A school voucher is an amount of money provided by the state government to parents for use for private educational programs, such as tuition at private schools. There are

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Kids at Whiteboard

Overview: Georgia’s 2021 Fiscal Year Budget for K-12 Education

Governor Kemp’s budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2021 provides Georgia’s public schools $10.9 billion, a $272 million increase above current funding. The largest single addition provides funding for pay raises for teachers and some non-certified school personnel that make less than $40,000 per year. Costs tied to student enrollment growth make up

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State of Education Funding in Georgia (2020)

Georgia’s public schools are funded through a law passed in 1985 called the Quality Basic Education Act, or QBE. This report offers an assessment of the state of education funding in Georgia by analyzing how it compares to prior years

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Georgia’s K-12 Equalization Grants Explained

The state of Georgia has a constitutional obligation to provide every child with an “adequate public education.”[1] Over the past 50 years, almost every state’s funding laws have been created or changed in response to lawsuits alleging that schools are

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Teachers Retirement System of Georgia Explained

State lawmakers introduced several bills in the 2019 legislative session that could significantly alter the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia (TRS) if passed in 2020. There are 390,000 current and former Georgia educators participating in the pension system as either

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How Does Georgia Fund Schools?

The video above is narrated by Dr. Stephen Owens, GBPI Senior Policy Analyst. Below is a full transcript. The decades-old law that dictates how the state of Georgia disperses money to schools sits at the heart of most education policy

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