About the OBF Equity Toolkit

In recent years, several states have adopted or refined OBF policy that incentivizes institutions to increase outcomes for underserved students. The OBF Equity Toolkit captures the challenges and opportunities inherent in these efforts. It provides state policymakers and institutional leaders with practical lessons from the field and considerations as they work to develop OBF policies that can support states in addressing equity for students and across institutions.

The toolkit is broken into four series:

Series 1 provides background information on each state’s OBF policy and a review of preeminent literature in OBF;
Series 2 focuses on the development and refinement of six OBF policies that prioritize outcomes for underserved student populations;
Series 3 details a range of strategies and considerations for how states can support institutions in closing equity gaps during OBF implementation; and
Series 4 provides examples of how institutions responded to OBF policies, while prioritizing equitable student outcomes.

Within each Series, short individual modules focus on specific equity challenges that state policymakers or institutional leaders may face when developing, revising, or responding to an OBF policy. The experiences of our six study states offer important insights and promising practices into how states can improve OBF policies to reduce achievement gaps and support institutions that serve students historically neglected by higher education.