Yes, money matters, but the details can make all the difference

Contexts of Convenience: Generalizing from Published Evaluations of School Finance Policies

“…The "study-quality" issue is how successful the authors have been in selecting circumstances and employing the resultant data in ways that allow identification of the desired parameters. McGee (2023aMcGee ( , 2023b in evaluating a number of the studies that we have identified in our review, provides several examples that underscore the difficulty of identifying the causal impact of specific funding programs: some funding changes are directly correlated legislative programs; it is difficult to assume that either legislative or judicially-inspired funding changes are random; and, depending on the temporal nature of funding observations, it is possible that related demographic changes enter the picture. These issues of the validity of key underlying identification concerns interact with potential questions about the application of the estimation methodology, including but not restricted to the publication issues previously noted.…”