1/14/98
ATHENS, Ohio -- A new statistical analysis of Ohio's public school districts by an Ohio University economist suggests the best way to reduce the state's inequity among public schools is to increase funding to the poorest districts without a tax increase.
Targeting spending on schools in low-income areas will reduce differences in educational opportunity and will provide a remedy to current school funding inequities, said Distinguished Professor of Economics Richard Vedder.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled last spring that the current public school funding method based on local property taxes is unconstitutional.
"Family income, school attendance, welfare participation and the presence of minorities are important factors in explaining the huge differences between schools in performance on standardized tests," Vedder said. "Spending more money will do little or nothing to improve student performances in most districts. The exception is in the state's poorest districts, where more money needs to be spent to offset very low income levels and high welfare participation. Sending state dollars to these districts should lead to improved learning outcomes and satisfy the court."
Vedder recommends the state increase funding to the 100 to 150 poorest districts, and said the ruling comes at an opportune time when the state's robust financial condition will allow increased funding to poor districts without new taxes or reductions in other state expenditures.
"The state's budget this year will be at least $700 million more in the black than predicted last June, barring new state spending, and we already have reserve funds of more than $1 billion. This allows for a generous expansion of state aid and support for a bond issue for capital projects with no increase in taxes."
Joshua Hall, a graduate student in economics, and Michael Melander, a student in the Honors Tutorial College, conducted the study with Vedder.
"The school districts with high levels of participation in extracurricular activities usually have higher scores on exams like the ninth-grade proficiency tests," Hall said. " Teacher experience and educational background do not have much impact." Melander noted a large discrepancy statewide in the ninth-grade proficiency test results.
"The percentage of students passing all portions of the ninth-grade proficiency test in the years 1993-96 varied from 14 percent in Cleveland to more than 95 percent in Oakwood City near Dayton," Melander said.
The statistical model used to analyze these differences included more than 20 socioeconomic, demographic, family and financial factors.
Some other findings:
-Reducing class size, even in the lower grades, is an expensive and ineffective way of improving learning.
-Greater competition between districts seems to promote learning, perhaps supporting experiments in charter schools, vouchers or other ways of promoting choice.
-Test scores are particularly high in areas with high proportions of intact families and, probably, high level of religious involvement.
-Students in Southeast Ohio do far poorer on tests than those in other regions; students in West Central Ohio do the best, despite spending the least money per pupil; test performance is far lower in big cities than in other areas of the state, almost certainly because of unfavorable socioeconomic factors.
-Spending on capital outlays has fallen sharply as a percent on total K-12 spending since 1960.
-Overall spending per pupil has tripled in real terms in the past 35 years, although test scores have not shown much improvement.
Analyzing test scores over a four-year period, the authors used letter grades to grade each district in the state based on actual test performance. They also evaluated the districts taking into account a variety of socioeconomic, demographic, family and financial factors, reasoning that districts with poor out-of-school learning environments cannot be expected to perform as well as districts with more advantaged students. The study analyzed 607 of Ohio's school districts, all the districts with more than 150 students.