Why Money Matters Sometimes
Would schools be better if they had more money? The question is becoming embarrassing. According to a June 1996 NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll, education is the issue that ranks first among American adults in deciding how to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Yet this most basic of questions about education has no clear answer. For most of the nation's superintendents, school principals, teachers, and parents, the answer is obvious--more money can buy the things that improve education. The research evidence is far more negative. As University of Rochester Professor Eric Hanushek has argued on many occasions, a substantial majority of studies find little relationship between student test scores and either school expenditures or the smaller class sizes and other things that money buys.
How can quantitative research and common sense be so at odds? A natural experiment involving 16 elementary schools serving minority, high-poverty populations in East Austin, Texas, provides an answer. In the late 1980s, student absenteeism in these schools was high and student scores on state-mandated achievement tests were extremely low--low vis-a-vis statewide averages and low vis-a-vis the rest of Austin. In 1989, as part of the resolution to a desegregation court case, the 16 elementary schools were designated "priority schools" and each school was given $300,000 per year for five years. The $300,000 payments were additions to normal school spending. The settlements were made on the theory that money mattered. If the theory was right, this money should have been enough to make a difference.
Five years later, at the end of the 1994 school year, the money had produced mixed results and an important management lesson. In 14 of the 16 schools, student attendance and student achievement had remained very low. In the two other schools, Zavala Elementary School and Ortega Elementary School, the record was very different. By the end of 1994, student attendance rates at those two schools were among the city's highest and student test scores had risen to the city's average. There was no "creaming" here: Zavala and Ortega had continued to draw students from the same poor neighborhoods where family incomes averaged $12,000. But somehow, the two elementary schools...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Principals and Headmasters
- Boston Public Schools, Boston, MA
- Middle School Language Arts Teacher
- TEAM Schools, Newark, NJ
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
- Superintendent
- Pinellas County Schools, Pinellas County, FL
- Program Coordinator
- Institute for Educational Advancement, South Pasadena, CA
