Rigor you can inspect.
How every finding on this site is made, what it cannot show, and the data behind it. Limits are published before conclusions.
NowEvery coded row links to the evidence behind it. Absence of evidence is recorded as exactly that.
One question, two parts
When K–12 funding follows the student, how do colleges and universities respond? And who is leading? Everything on the site answers one of these parts. School districts are the comparison.
How do colleges and universities respond?
Three lists of universities, read through four lenses: teacher prep beyond public schools, K–12 services to non-public students, market and vendor behavior, and campus debate.
Universities Readiness IndexWho is leading?
Institutions, practitioners and researchers whose response is on the record, each with a source.
Leaders AtlasHow do school districts respond?
Districts lose enrollment directly, so they moved first. Their response is the benchmark for universities.
DistrictsHow responses are coded
Every response gets a direction. The direction records what an institution did, not whether it was right.
Four categories, by what was built
- Built for the sector: stated purpose is to prepare, credential, support or operate education outside district schools.
- Names the sector: institutional text names private, charter or non-traditional settings.
- Incidental: reaches these educators only as a side effect.
- Nothing found: absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.
Operating and authorizing schools is coded, not just programs. Before any institution is coded "nothing found," the state's charter sponsor registry is checked.
Innovation score, and why it is separate
Each university's two strongest education initiatives are scored on scale, evidence and novelty (0–5 each). Score = 2 × novelty + scale + evidence, max 20. The portfolio is the mean of the top two; a missing second counts as zero. Response to portable funding is coded separately, so innovation never stands in for response.
Three evidence states
Most of what this research finds is absence. Absence is drawn, never left blank.
Limits that bind hard
- Cases were found by searching for engagement. That samples on the outcome and biases every explanation offered.
- Coverage is uneven. Florida and Michigan are complete. Six states carry a single placeholder row. Read every state total against its depth.
- Published text only. Coding rests on program pages, catalogs and news, not interviews. An institution that considered a program and declined looks the same as one that never considered it.
- The university scan is a first pass. 102 universities, public sources from 2025–2026. "None observed" means not found in that scan. The 31 Most Innovative universities outside the AAU are coded for response but not yet scored.
- Florida's state colleges are not yet scanned. 25 of the 28 Florida College System institutions remain unread.
- Single points in time. This field moves fast. Every row carries the date it was checked.
The data
Every page renders from these files. Free to use, including commercially. Please carry the caveats: cite "nothing found," never "nothing exists."
Cite as: When Money Follows the Child, [dataset], 2026. whenmoneyfollowsthechild.org. Accessed [date].
Corrections
What was wrong, what is right, and what it changes. Dated and permanent. No silent edits.
We coded the University of West Florida "nothing found." It is a registered charter school sponsor.
Our July pass read only UWF's School of Education program roster. UWF is listed in the state's Directory of Charter School Sponsoring Entities, and its trustees approved it as authorizer of a Somerset Academy elementary school. The row is now coded built for the sector. The state sponsor registry is now checked before any institution is coded "nothing found." That change also surfaced Miami Dade College and Pasco-Hernando State College.
We claimed no one had scanned colleges of education for choice-sector programs. EdChoice had.
Surfing the Pipeline by Michael Q. McShane (October 2023) scanned Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin and Vermont, and is the source of the 34% preparedness figure. Our baseline now builds on it with attribution.