WMFC When Money Follows the Child
Data

Research that cannot be checked is not research.

Every coded row, every source, every check date — free, open, and citable. No login, no paywall, no request form.

The Readiness Index — 2026 Baseline

39 higher-education institutions across 9 states, coded for whether their education units offer anything built for the portable-funding sector — including all eight Michigan public universities that authorize charter schools. Includes the coding scheme, the four competing explanations, and the nine research gaps.

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FieldWhat it holds
nameInstitution, as it names itself
stateUS state
tierCoded category — Tier 1 built for the sector, Tier 2 names it, Tier 3 incidental, Tier 0 nothing found
checkedThe date a human read the live institutional page. Not a publication date.
evidenceWhat was found and what it means, including caveats
sourceLive URL for the claim

The Portable-Funding Atlas — 2026 Baseline

175 countries in the data spine. 29 coded to WMFC standard — the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom (England), plus North and South America in full as of August 2026 — with 12 shortlisted and 134 honest blanks. Coverage grows by editing this one file.

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FieldWhat it holds
nameCountry name
tierCoverage depth, not a policy judgment. 1 = coded, 2 = shortlisted, 3 = not yet coded. Unrelated to the Readiness Index tiers above.
sinceYear portable funding began, where coded
mechanismHow the money moves — voucher, constitutional equal funding, academies, and so on
findingsWorkforce and institution findings, each with source and check date
code_labelThe coded observation in one phrase
Two tier systems, two meanings

The Readiness Index codes institutions by what they have built. The Atlas codes countries by how far our research has got. They share the word "tier" and nothing else. The Atlas scale reads Coded / Shortlisted / Not yet coded for this reason; the numeric values are kept in the data file so existing citations stay valid.

How to cite

Cite the edition and the date you accessed it — the datasets are living documents and we date every row for exactly this reason.

When Money Follows the Child. The WMFC Readiness Index, 2026 Baseline. whenmoneyfollowsthechild.org. Accessed [date].
When Money Follows the Child. The Portable-Funding Atlas, 2026 Baseline. whenmoneyfollowsthechild.org. Accessed [date].

Terms

A note on the raw files

The JSON links above open the machine-readable files directly — useful if you're pulling them into code, dense if you're reading. The CSV buttons give you a spreadsheet instead, and the site pages give you the same data laid out for humans.