School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement

Lafortune, Julien; Rothstein, Jesse; Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore

doi:10.1257/app.20160567

Cited by 239 publications

(216 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…This heterogeneity stands in contrast to recent studies of school finance reforms (Jackson, Johnson, and Persico 2016;Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach forthcoming;and Candelaria and Shores 2015), which found effects primarily among high-poverty districts. I also find that districts allocated the marginal dollar primarily toward schools serving wealthier families within the district.…”

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confidence: 93%

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Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment

Hyman¹

2017

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

111

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G overnment spending on primary and secondary education accounts for 4.3 percent of US GDP (National Center for Education Statistics 2013). Despite this large government investment, it remains unknown whether education spending improves students' long-run outcomes. One difficulty in answering this question is the lack of plausibly exogenous variation in spending. A second challenge is the necessity of high quality administrative data with which to track students over time, and especially past high school graduation.An extensive literature has solved the first challenge by exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in education spending due to school finance reform. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, dozens of states reformed education financing with the goal of reducing inequalities in education by equalizing spending across school districts. These reforms generally succeeded in (at least partially) equalizing spending between poor and rich school districts (Downes 1992; Murray,

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contrasting

confidence: 93%

“…I do not focus on these results, because they are statistically imprecise, but I present them in online Appendix Table 7. Jackson, Johnson, and Persico 2016;and Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach forthcoming).…”

Section: Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment

Hyman¹

2017

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

111

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“…Most recently, Baker () finds that targeted and sustained school finance reforms can improve both short‐ and long‐term student outcomes. Similarly, Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach () find that 10 years following reform, relative achievement of students in low‐income districts had risen by roughly one‐fifth of the baseline gap between high‐ and low‐income districts. Finally, Grubb () argues that Hanushek and others inappropriately focus on school revenues rather than school resources, and finds that low‐performing schools disproportionately suffer from ineffective teaching, poor‐quality curriculum, and poor school climates.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 93%

Do Enhanced Funding Policies Targeting Students in Poverty Close Achievement Gaps? Evidence from the American States, 1996–2015

Thorson

Gearhart

2019

Poverty & Public Policy

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Public concern stemming from the wide disparities in academic achievement based on student poverty status extends back at least to the issuing of the Coleman Report in 1966. The Coleman Report found large and persistent achievement gaps between economic and racial subgroups, yet, perhaps surprisingly, did not find large gaps in funding. The achievement gaps identified in the Coleman Report persist today. Since the NCES began tracking poverty gaps with the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in the 1990s, the disparities in achievement based on poverty have been large and statistically significant. In response, many states began enacting school funding mechanisms to direct additional resources to high‐poverty schools. Currently, 41 states have employed funding enhancements for poor students (EdBuild, 2018). Are these mechanisms effective at reducing the disparity in achievement for poor versus non‐poor students? Using data from the Urban Institute (2017), we find that states that have directed additional resources towards poor students effectively reduced the disparity between poor and non‐poor students in NAEP fourth‐ and eighth‐grade math and reading exams. Whereas the results are large and statistically significant, the costs associated with fully eliminating the disparity between poor and non‐poor students are very high.

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“…This approach is explained clearly in Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach (2018). Our empirical strategy follows an event-study interpretation of a difference-indifferences estimator.…”

Section: A Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is drawn from Bailey (2010), who presents evidence that preexisting contraceptive sales bans across the United States provide plausibly exogenous variation in access to the birth control pill in the early 1960's. The second approach we build upon is the strategy outlined by Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach (2018) for measuring the policy impact of legal changes when there may be a dynamic response of the outcome variable to the policy change. Additionally the early 1960s saw a number of states overturn their explicit sales bans, and in 1965 the U.S. Supreme Court's Griswold decision struck down all remaining Comstock laws, effectively equalizing marital access to the pill across states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paradox of the Pill: Heterogeneous Effects of Oral Contraceptive Access

Beauchamp

Pakaluk

2019

Economic Inquiry

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The twentieth century saw dramatic increases in nonmarital births, concentrated heavily among poor and working-class women. In this paper, we investigate whether the oral contraceptive pill played a causal role in the rise of nonmarital births. Exploiting exogenous variation in laws governing access to the pill, we find that changes in marital access to the pill increased the nonmarital birthrate by between 15% and 18%, accounting for about one-third of the overall increase in nonmarital births. These effects are concentrated almost entirely among women whose fathers did not graduate high school and among minority women. We also document that the pill increased spacing between first and second births, and lowered the probability that a woman obtained a high-school diploma, consistent with increases in nonmarital births. We find no evidence that postsecondary education levels were influenced by pill access, and no evidence that nonmarital births move with male employment patterns. Our findings add to a growing literature which documents the power of the pill to shape women's lives in broadly heterogenous ways, with minority and less-well-educated women bearing the brunt of the losses, a phenomenon we call the paradox of the pill. (JEL J12, J13, I24) * We are grateful to the editor and three anonymous referees for improving the manuscript considerably; we also thank

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School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement

Cited by 239 publications

References 55 publications

Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment

Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment

Do Enhanced Funding Policies Targeting Students in Poverty Close Achievement Gaps? Evidence from the American States, 1996–2015

The Paradox of the Pill: Heterogeneous Effects of Oral Contraceptive Access

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