New Report: Effect of Resources on Student Achievement

Posted by on April 2, 2004

[posted from Public Education Network newsblast]

ADEQUACY, EQUITY & THE EFFECT OF RESOURCES ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

A recent WestEd research summary suggests that not only do resources matter but they are distributed unequally. Some districts, for example, provide funding of more than $15,000 per student, while other districts allocate less than $4,000 per student. Such funding discrepancies have led to numerous state-level legal challenges claiming that school funding systems are constitutionally inequitable. Over the last decade, these lawsuits have slowly evolved from focusing on issues of equity to focusing on issues of adequacy — that is, what are the resources schools need to adequately educate all students? This ASCD Research Brief focuses on a 1996 meta-analysis examining the assumption that resource levels do matter.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/researchbrief/volume2/v2n6.html