Every Student Succeeds Act (2015): Exposing Racialized Spending Disparities at the Intradistrict Level in Florida Public Schools
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) made public previously unavailable data on school district finances at the school level. While a large policy and research literature has focused on the importance of spending differences across school districts with varying levels of property wealth as a critical determinant of educational inequity, ESSA made possible an analysis of spending inequities at the intradistrict level across schools. Drawing on ESSA per-pupil expenditures data for the 2018-19 school year for the state of Florida, this thesis analyzes the association between school per pupil spending and student characteristics (race, lunch status) at 2,727 traditional public schools. The school district per pupil spending inequities most profoundly affect Hispanic students, with a $110 drop in spending for every 10 percentage point increase in Hispanic students. In contrast, school spending increases with the concentration of free or reduced lunch students. Breaking down the results by school level, many of the same patterns exist, with per pupil spending decreasing as the percentage of Hispanic students increases, and spending increasing with the percentage of free and reduced price lunch students. However, the magnitude of spending inequity changes across school levels, with the drop in spending associated with Hispanic students becoming increasingly extreme from elementary to high school. These findings not only expose inequities in per pupil spending but are also consistent with the hypothesis that the unequal distribution of quality, experienced teachers across schools contributes to sustained educational inequality. Clearly, there are racialized inequities in the way Florida public school districts distribute their funds, and this study makes a crucial first step in exposing said inequities, creating the need for intradistrict school finance reform to work towards leveling the playing field and closing the achievement gap.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 3, 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Thomson, Alexa |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | intradistrict inequity |
|---|---|
| Subject | interdistrict inequity |
| Subject | Every Student Succeeds Act |
| Subject | per pupil spending |
| Subject | education gap |
| Subject | Florida |
| Subject | public schools |
| Subject | school finance |
| Subject | school finance reform |
| Subject | Stanford University |
| Subject | Stanford Graduate School of Education |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Thomson, Alexa. (2021). Every Student Succeeds Act (2015): Exposing Racialized Spending Disparities at the Intradistrict Level in Florida Public Schools. Unpublished Honors Thesis. Stanford University, Stanford CA.
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- athomson@stanford.edu
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