Education Next – C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker C. Johnson and Claudia Persico
“Per-pupil spending can vary drastically between school districts, with affluent suburban districts often outspending their neighbors by significant margins. Such disparate school spending is frequently identified as a primary culprit in our nation’s wide achievement gaps between students of different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. The argument makes intrinsic sense to many: if one school district spends significantly more educating its students, then of course those students will perform better academically. Existing research on the topic, however, paints a muddier picture. In 1966, James Coleman conducted one of the largest education studies in history to analyze aspects of educational equality in the United States, including the relationship between school spending and student outcomes. Coleman found that variation in school resources (as measured by per-pupil spending and student-to-teacher ratios) was unrelated to variation in student achievement on standardized tests. In the decades following the release of the Coleman Report, the effect of school spending on student academic performance was studied extensively, and Coleman’s conclusion was widely upheld.”(more)