Level of performance and low-wealth school districts: A case study of North Carolina

Research in Education, May 1998 by Jones, Enid B, Lawrence, William W

Introduction A major source of controversy in educational policy concerns the extent to which there is demonstrable correlation between educational expenditures and the quality of education as evident in the level of achievement of students. The quality-cost controversy has received considerable attention in the literature on educational policy and finance. The Coleman report (1966) is credited with sparking activity in research into the production-function model to examine student achievement. In the Coleman study the researchers noted that the student's home background (including region, degree of urbanisation, socio-economic status and ethnic group) was found to be the primary determinant of school success. They also found that achievement varied with the social class of other students in the school. Essentially, schools were seen as unable to alter the effects of environment. Rather, home-related factors together with native student characteristics were the strongest predictors of academic achievement ... especially, given that schools have reached their present level of quality, variation in schools may have little effect upon achievement.

MacPhail-Wilcox and King (1986) in their analysis of production function research concluded that, while the issue is extremely complex, at least seven principles can be drawn: (1) the characteristics of students, combined with parental, peer, and community attributes, lend more to learning than is contributed by any purchased resource; (2) teachers' socio-economic status, salary, experience, and verbal skills are related to pupils' achievement; (3) the academic preparation of teachers is not necessarily linked with student achievement; (4) there are many indications of a relationship between class size and achievement; (S) teacher preparation time load has an impact by reducing preparation time; (6) heterogeneous student grouping does not detract from high achievers' opportunities; (7) expenditure levels are clearly related to achievement because, after other variables are controlled, achievement in districts with more money is higher than in less wealthy districts.

Later studies have shown that some school factors such as class size and teacher experience are significant. Yudof et al. (1982) reported on Charles Benson's examination of the effect on student achievement of such variables as everyday kinds of interaction, parental control over children's activities, and educational and cultural enrichment. This research showed that a student's family socio-economic status still remained a more important explanatory factor than the ones mentioned above, but those variables were also positively related to achievement. In particular, parental input did not increase the proportion of high achievers, but it did reduce the proportion of low achievers in families of low socio-economic status.

Since 1966 several models of effective schools have emerged to disprove the Coleman report and have added to the body of knowledge on education policy. A basic premise of effective schools research has been the notion that educational outcomes can be altered by emulating the traits of effective schools. Generally, the effective schools research has indicated that positive change can follow when schools reflect organisational and process variables designed to alter student performance (Thompson et al., 1994, p. 38). The effective schools research has not escaped criticism, including the belief that the conclusions drawn were not fully supported by the studies conducted. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this study reflection on the variables used in the achievement literature is sufficient. Summers and Wolfe (1977) found that school inputs (specifically, teacher academic preparation, class size, and so forth) and student inputs (specifically, racial make-up, the presence of high achievers, and so forth) had a positive influence. The implications of this study for education finance were profound: with sufficient resources change could be made to follow by manipulating the purchased educational environment. Equal opportunity and productivity studies that have also been done to measure this relationship indicate that classroom resources do matter because pupils with similar out-of-school backgrounds learn at varying rates (Jones, 1985).

Research has also shown that school districts across the nation tend to spend their money consistently on higher teacher salaries, special education, and increased staff. Odden et al. (1995) found that high-spending, lowspending and average-spending districts all tend to spend approximately 60 per cent of their budgets on instruction; however, the levels of student achievement do not correlate with spending patterns. The authors contend that this is due partly to programmatic regularities that reflect unimaginative school organisation and uses of education dollars that are unlikely to improve student learning.

While increases in spending for the poorest districts could have some potentially large benefits, there is little evidence that increased expenditures improve education outcome measures in terms of scores on standardised tests. In fact as Thompson et al. (1994) state, four observations about achievement and resource interaction appear sound: (1) the data are not conclusive, but the findings are sufficiently persuasive for the deleterious effect of insufficient resources on achievement to be presumed, at the very least; (2) in the absence of absolute covariance, there are sufficient data to compel reasonable people to err in favour of the lesser evil; (3) all lines of research form a plea for increased investigation into the factors that make a difference in achievement; (4) to at least some degree the outcome appears to point a clear path towards discovering more about how resources are distributed rather than how much is available.