The Impact of Facilities on the Cost of Education

Abstract

This paper uses new data on school district capital stocks, stochastic frontier analysis, and a value-added measure of school quality to provide the fi rst direct evaluation of the relationship between school facilities and school district costs. We fi nd that the cost of education increases as the capital stock increases, suggesting either that school districts are grossly overcapitalized or that nicer facilities refl ect an important, unmeasured dimension of school quality. We also fi nd that cost function estimates for Texas are largely insensitive to the exclusion of the capital stock measures, suggesting that stochastic frontier cost function estimates without a capital stock measure are unlikely to be biased.

Analysis of foreign physical activity recommendations and guidelines for schools

“…PA, which is an inseparable and cross-section part of school curricula also in the Czech Republic (Sigmund, Sigmundová, Frömel, & Vašíčková, 2010), can result in an increase in the natural need for PA and improved study results in schoolchildren (Donnelly et al, 2009;Kibbe et al, 2011). An important educative aspect that can have a positive influence on the level of PA in children includes school facilities and equipment, particularly the learning environment and material equipment that should be appropriate in terms of purpose, hygiene and aesthetics (Gorman, Lackney, Rollings, & Huang, 2012;Gronberg, Jansen, & Taylor, 2011). The provision of a safe and appropriate environment for performing PA can be achieved by making school facilities accessible (gym, outdoor field), making sports facilities available outside school lessons (weekends, holidays), promoting active transport (bicycle stands, lockers), during school lessons and breaks -providing opportunities to stretch on the carpet, do exercise, relax, PA should not be used as a form of punishment (ACSM, 1988;Baranowski et al, 1997;Department of Health andAgeing, 2004a, 2004b;Michigan Department of Community Health, 2002;NASPE, 2001NASPE, , 2010USD-HHS, 2011;USDHHS & USDA, 2011).…”

Some pennies are more equal than others: Inequitable school facilities investment in San Antonio, Texas

“…Davis (2015) noted that the most emphasized dependent variable is student test scores, though "researchers have also looked at the wider macro-social impact of high-quality school facilities on housing prices (Cellini, Ferreira, & Rothstein, 2010) and voters' support for schools" (p. 6). Scholars have also looked at the impact of facilities spending on the overall cost of education (Gronberg, Jansen, & Taylor, 2011).…”

“…Issues with methods and facilities data. Traditionally, economists of education have utilized education "production function" methods, to evaluate the impacts of inputs like facilities on educational outcomes, though these methods are problematic given that researchers have not settled on a standard way of measuring facilities quality (Gronberg, Jansen, & Taylor, 2011). Consequently, the literature is crowded with studies that regress a few characteristics of a school's physical environment on students' outcomes represented by achievement scores (see Tanner, 2009 as an example).…”

Are Charters the Best Alternative? A Cost Frontier Analysis of Alternative Education Campuses in Texas

“…We have data on the TAKS scores of individual students in reading and math from 2005 through 2011 and use those data to generate our measure of school quality. Although we recognize that schools produce unmeasured outcomes that may be uncorrelated with math and reading test scores, and that standardized tests may not measure the acquisition of important higher‐order skills such as problem solving, these are the performance measures for which districts are held accountable by the state, and the most common measures of school district output in the literature (e.g., Imazeki and Reschovsky or Gronberg, Jansen, and Taylor , ).…”