Resources on the Costing K-12 Education

Here is a list of some of the many academic research pieces on costing K-12 education.

Baker, School Finance and Courts: Does Reform Matter, and How Can We Tell? (2011) (Teachers College Record Volume 113, Number 11)

The Real Shame of the Nation The Causes and Consequences of Interstate Inequity in Public School Investments (Education Law Center) This paper presents, for the first time, a new National Education Cost Model (NECM) to better understand the relative adequacy of state investments in public schooling toward achieving common outcome goals. Although it purports to present a measure of funding adequacy, in fact, it presents a statistical estimate regarding adequacy to bring students to average performance, not to state standards or proficiency.

Baker, Does Money Matter in Education, (2016 Shanker Inst, 2d Edition) This second edition policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. It includes research released since the original brief in 2012 and covers a handful of additional topics. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money doesn’t make a difference in education, and that reduced funding is unlikely to harm educational quality. Such proclamations have even been used to justify large cuts to education budgets over the past few years. These positions, however, have little basis in the empirical research on the relationship between funding and school quality.

 Borman, Schools and Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis of Coleman’s Equality of Educational Opportunity Data,   Our results suggest that schools do indeed matter, in that when one examines the outcomes across the national sample of schools, fully 40% of the differences in achievement can be found between schools. (2010)

Committee on Education Finance, National Academy of Sciences,  Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance This volume of background papers was prepared in connection with one part of the committee's study. The volume includes eight papers commissioned by the committee to inform its discussions about equity and adequacy in education finance, two of the issues it was specifically charged to address. (online version of Ladd, et al, below)

Downes, What Is Adequate? Operationalizing the Concept of Adequacy for New York (2004)The ultimate goal of this discussion is to suggest how existing methodologies could be combined to produce a defensible, replicable, and understandable method for determining adequacy.

Duncome, Estimating the Cost of an Adequate Education in New York (Syracuse Univ 2002) The objective of this study is to develop estimates of the costs of financing the achievement of higher standards. The key tools employed to estimate the cost of adequacy are education cost functions and cost of education indexes.

Duncome and Yinger, How Much More Does a Disadvantaged Student Cost? (Syracuse Univ. 2003) This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of  educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways.

Dynarski, It's Not Nothing, The role of Money in Improving Education (Brookings, 2017) Summarizes statistical evidence from Jackson and LaFortune that significant increases in funding translate into improved educational results.  Argues that short term increments do not do so.  

Equity and Excellence Commission, For Each and Every Child, (2013)The commission’s charge was to provide advice to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education on the disparities in meaningful educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap, with a focus on systems of finance, and to recommend ways in which federal policies could address such disparities.

Hyman, Does Money Matter in the Long Run?   American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 9 (4): 256-80.  Using statistical techniques, the author attempts to determine whether additional primary school spending had a long term impact on the success of students as measured by post-secondary enrollment.  Students in the study population exposed to $1,000 (ten percent) more spending were three percentage points (seven percent) more likely to enroll in college and 2.3 percentage points (eleven percent) more likely to earn a postsecondary degree. As found in other recent studies (e.g., Cascio et al., 2013), the author also provides evidence that local government responses to state
or federal education policies can result in bene ts accruing to students who may not have been the intended beneficiaries of the policy.

Ladd, et al,  Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance, (National Academies Press, 1999) In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Congress requested a major study of the U.S. system of elementary and secondary education finance. In response to this request, the National Research Council (NRC) set up the Committee on Education Finance to undertake the study. The committee was established within the NRC’s Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

LaFortune, SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016)  Using an event study research design that exploits the apparent randomness of reform timing, we show that reforms lead to sharp, immediate, and sustained increases in spending in low-income school districts. Using representative samples from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, we find that reforms cause increases in the achievement of students in these districts, phasing in gradually over the years following the reform. The implied effect of school resources on educational achievement is large.

Odden, Doubling Student Performance, and Finding the Resources to Do it, (2009)  Argues that major improvements in student performance may be accomplished by reallocating resources. Asserts that new funding, when provided to school districts is not allocated to the programs and strategies most likely to improve achievement for students who are lagging behind. 

Yinger, Helping Children Left Behind, State Aid and the Pursuit of Educational Equity. (2004 MIT Press)  An overview and five case studies of school finance reform; a resource for scholars, public officials, and others interested in education finance reform.  (395 Pages)

Yinger, How Equitable is the School Finance System in New York State(Syracuse 2019) This policy brief provides an overview and evaluation of the education finance system in New York State. Argues that the State needs a costing entity to provide accurate costing.  Discusses the failure of New York to maintain the funding requirements called for in judicial decisions and provides costing analysis of the New York student weighting system.