Does Money Really Matter for Educational Outcomes?
In the first study, the researchers tracked the relative targeting of funding to districts serving economically disadvantaged students for each state from 1993 to 2012. They found that increased funding leads to greater and more fairly distributed educational resources. As seen in the graph to the right, when states and districts spend a greater share of their fiscal capacity on their schools, school spending increases translating to more staff, smaller class sizes, and more competitive teacher wages. With smaller class sizes, more staff, and better teachers, students receive a better education.
In another study, researchers studied the impact of post-1990 adequacy-oriented school finance reforms on the distribution of school spending and student achievement between low-income and high-income school districts. They found that the reforms (court orders and legislative reforms) achieved their goal of improving educational opportunity in low-income school districts. The reforms lead to sharp, immediate, and sustained increases in average school spending. By using test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, it was found that reforms caused gradual increase in the achievement of students from low-income districts. The study also found that states with reform saw decreasing achievement gaps over the 20-year period studied, while states without reform saw achievement gaps increase, as seen in the graph to the right.
In a third study, the researchers focused on the relationship between school funding, resource allocation, and achievement among low-income students. They used more than 20 years of revenue and expenditure data for schools to empirically test the idea that increased investments in schools is associated with greater access to resources. They concluded that when states invest in resources that matter like low student-to-teacher ratios, especially in high poverty districts, there tends to have a higher academic outcome for children from low-income families and smaller income-based achievement gaps. The researchers gave the model to the right to better explain the relationship of schooling resources to children’s measurable school achievement outcomes.
A final paper studied the effects of school finance reforms of the 1970s and 1980s on school funding and student outcomes. The authors linked spending and reform data to data on more than 15,000 children born between 1955 and 1985 from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The study found that school funding can lead to improvements far beyond test scores. They saw that the increased spending led to higher graduation rates, greater educational attainment, higher earnings, and lower rates of poverty in adulthood.
These articles debunk the myth that money doesn’t matter in regard to educational opportunities. This means that students who live in poorer areas go to schools with less money which lessens their educational opportunities. Money plays a key role, and it is up to the state-elected officials to ensure that the funds are adequately and equitably distributed across the state.