ERIC Number: EJ835083
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Feb-13
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1068-2341
EISSN: N/A
Within-District Resource Allocation and the Marginal Costs of Providing Equal Educational Opportunity: Evidence from Texas and Ohio
Baker, Bruce D.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, v17 n3 Feb 2009
This study explores within-district fiscal resource allocation across elementary schools in Texas and Ohio large city school districts and in their surrounding metropolitan areas. Specifically, I ask whether districts widely reported as achieving greater resource equity through adoption of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) have in fact done so. I compare Houston Independent School District (a WSF district) to other large Texas cities and Cincinnati (also using WSF) to other large Ohio cities. Using a conventional expenditure function approach, I evaluate the sensitivity of elementary school budgets to special education populations, poverty rates, and school size. Next, I estimate two-stage least squares cost functions across schools to evaluate the relative costs of achieving average outcomes with respect to varied poverty rates within and across school districts within metropolitan areas. I use these estimates to evaluate whether urban core schools on average spend sufficient resources to compete with neighboring schools in other districts in the same Core Based Statistical Area. I find first that widely reported WSF success stories provide no more predictable funding with respect to student needs than other large urban districts in the same state. I also find that in some cases, resource levels in urban core elementary schools are relatively insufficient for competing with schools in neighboring districts to achieve comparable outcomes. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures and 7 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Educational Finance, Resource Allocation, Educational Equity (Finance), Costs, Urban Schools, School Districts, Elementary Schools, Metropolitan Areas, School Size, Budgets, Special Education, Poverty, Least Squares Statistics, Funding Formulas
Colleges of Education at Arizona State University and the University of South Florida. c/o Editor, USF EDU162, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-5650. Tel: 813-974-3400; Fax: 813-974-3826; Web site: http://epaa.asu.edu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ohio; Texas
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A