Georgia offers two merit-based scholarships to in-state college students: HOPE Scholarships, which provide partial tuition support, and Zell Miller Scholarships, which provide full tuition support but with stricter eligibility and retention conditions. Studies have examined retention of these scholarships but not other dynamics, including gaining HOPE Scholarships if students enter without them and follow-on transitions after students initially lose or gain a scholarship. This study uses Fall 2013 to Spring 2019 administrative data from 26 University System of Georgia institutions to estimate multivariate hazard models of (a) losing an entering Zell Miller Scholarship, (b) losing an entering HOPE Scholarship, (c) gaining a HOPE Scholarship after matriculating without one, (d) regaining a scholarship, and (e) losing a non-entering scholarship. Many students change their scholarship status—hazard analyses predict that 25 percent of entering Zell Miller Scholarship students lose their scholarships by their 90th credit hour, 42 percent of entering HOPE Scholarship students lose their scholarship by their 90th credit hour, and 27 percent of students who enter without a scholarship gain one. Students of color, students with economic disadvantages, and men are more likely to lose scholarships and less likely to gain scholarships. These dynamics compound inequalities in initial scholarship receipt.

For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high-achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full tuition, now called the Zell Miller Scholarship, with other students seeing aid reductions of approximately 15 percent. We exploit the fact that two of the criteria were high school grade point average and SAT/ACT score, which students could not manipulate when the change took place. We compare already-enrolled students just above and below these cutoffs, making use of advances in multi-dimensional regression discontinuity, to estimate effects of partial aid loss. We show that, after the changes, aid flowed disproportionately to wealthier students and find no evidence that the financial aid reduction affected persistence or graduation for these students. The results suggest that high-achieving students, particularly those already in college, may be less price-sensitive than their peers.

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to 2002 and exploiting within-school variations, we examine relationships among grade span, spending, and size. We find that school grade span is associated with differences in school size, class size, and grade size, though generally not with spending and other resources. In addition, we find class size and grade size differences in the same grade level at schools with different configurations, suggesting that school grade span affects not only school size but also class size and grade size. We find few relationships, though, between grade span and school-level performance, pointing to the need to augment these analyses with pupil-level data. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

In 1996, New York State began requiring all graduating high school students (starting with the Class of 1999) to pass rigorous end-of-course exams in five subjects. This study explores whether high school resources have been reallocated in the wake of these new standards and whether reallocation patterns differ among high- and low-graduation-rate schools. Using a six-year panel of school-level data, we model resources as a function of school and student characteristics, school graduation rates, and school fixed effects. Regression analyses reveal increases in direct services spending, while the percentage of more experienced and educated teachers fell. We find little evidence, though, of differential patterns related to graduation rates, with the exception of teacher licensure and nonpersonnel expenditures. The findings suggest that schools may have limited ability to redeploy nonteacher resources in the short term. While other funds may be reallocated, these represent a small share of total school resources.