Socioeconomic Inequality in School District Funding and Achievement (Poster 14)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Equitable school funding is essential for facilitating equitable schooling experiences. However, low-SES students’ access to school funding is inequitably distributed across places. Further, while we know school funding improves low-SES students’ achievement, we know little about how trends in school funding inequality are associated with trends in achievement inequality. In this paper, I use hierarchical linear modeling, fixed effects, instrumental variables, and difference-in-difference techniques to document recent trends in these relationships and identify the extent to which funding inequality predicts achievement inequality. Across states, I find that low-SES districts’ relative advantage in per pupil funding decreased between 2009 and 2019, and low-SES districts’ relative disadvantage in achievement increased over the same period. This suggests disparities in educational opportunities by district SES grew over the study period. Further, there appears to be little relationship between cross-district funding inequality and cross-district achievement inequality. In part, this may be because efforts at making school funding more equitable via state revenues may be undermined through compensatory patterns in high-SES districts’ local revenues. These findings suggest school funding reforms alone may be insufficient levers for the more equitable distribution of funding across school districts.

Author

• Kaylee T. Matheny, Stanford University
  Presenting Author