Financing Georgia's Schools: A Primer

Georgia's nearly 1.5 million students make it the ninth largest state K-12 school system in the United States. Furthermore, Georgia has one of the fastest growing school enrollments in the nation, registering an increase of 12.2 percent between 1996 and 2002. Educating these students requires substantial financial resources. The purpose of this Primer is to explain how education in Georgia is financed and to point out some of the major school financing issues confronting the state. Report No.8

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Relative Checks : Towards optimal Control of Administrative Power

Administrative agencies wield a necessary but dangerous power. Some control of that power is constitutionally required and normatively justified. Yet widely discordant views persist concerning the appropriate means of control. Scholars have proposed competing administrative control models that variably place the judiciary, the President, and Congress at the helm. Although these models offer critical insights into the institutional competencies of the respective branches, they tend to understate the limitations of those branches to check administrative power and ultimately marginalize the public interest costs occasioned by second-guessing administrative choice. The “relative checks” paradigm introduced here seeks to improve upon existing models in at least two critical respects. First, it posits the existence of an optimal control point within the shared values of two sometimes competing missions in administrative law: that of promoting the public interest and that of legitimizing administrative power within our constitutional scheme. Next, the paradigm argues that the optimal control ideal can be best realized by tailoring both the source and degree of administrative control to particular types of administrative actions with sensitivity to the institutional competencies of the respective checking bodies. Prescriptively, this framework seeks to apportion control among the respective branches in a way that capitalizes on each branch’s competencies while democratically promoting the public interest. Descriptively, looking through a relative checks lens may also enhance our understanding of existing administrative practices and the academic critiques thereof

Black-Box Immigration Federalism

In Immigration Outside the Law, Hiroshi Motomura confronts the three hardest questions in immigration today: what to do about our undocumented population, who should decide, and by what legal process. Motomura’s treatment is characteristically visionary, analytically rich, and eminently fair to competing views. The book’s intellectual arc begins with its title: “Immigration Outside the Law.” As the narrative unfolds, however, Motomura explains that undocumented immigrants are “Americans in waiting,” with moral and legal claims to societal integration

Dynamics of Merit-Based Scholarships in Georgia

Georgia offers two large 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 more stringent eligibility and retention conditions. While previous research has documented inequalities in initial merit scholarship, this study examines how the dynamics of scholarship gains and losses differ for students of color and students who are economically vulnerable, and across institutions, adding to a fuller understanding of inequality in merit-based scholarship receipt. We find that students’ scholarship status changes frequently, with 23 percent of students changing their status at least once and with higher rates of scholarship loss among HOPE Scholarship recipients. White students are more likely than Black and Hispanic students to enter college with a HOPE Scholarship and, particularly, with a Zell Miller Scholarship. Patterns of scholarship loss and gain over students’ careers widen these disparities as Black and Hispanic students are more likely than other students to lose scholarships and less likely to gain or regain them. Men, students from families with lower incomes, independent students, Pell grant recipients, and student loan recipients are also less likely to enter institutions with Zell Miller or HOPE Scholarships, less likely to retain scholarships if they do hold them, and less likely to gain scholarships during college. The report concludes with policy implications and proposals to address these inequalities