Humanities & Social Sciences Targeted school spending directly related to student academic performance
| Targeted school spending directly related to student academic performance |
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| Wednesday, April 09, 2008 | |
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The amount of money a high school spends on regular classroom instruction is directly related to the achievement level of its students – the more money, the greater the achievement, according to a study by researchers from the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study of North Carolina high schools that opened in 2005 and 2006 found that all other things being equal, an increase of $500 per pupil spent on regular classroom instruction is associated with an increase of nearly half a point on students’ average scores on end-of-course examinations. “Our findings strongly suggest that more resources targeted to the low performing schools and more effective use of existing resources will be needed to offset the effects of lower levels of student’s performance and, ultimately, to improve performance in chronically low-performing high schools,” said Gary Henry, the study’s lead researcher and FPG fellow. The study was commissioned in 2006 by North Carolina Governor Mike Easley to examine if low-performing schools were using existing resources in the most effective manner. Expenditures for “regular instruction” include teachers’ salaries, supplementary pay, benefits and bonuses; salaries for teachers’ assistants, tutors, and substitutes; instructional supplies and textbooks; and library or media services. More detailed analysis indicates that higher teacher compensation expenditures had the largest effect on student performance. “The higher teacher salaries may allow the schools to hire and retain teachers that have important but unmeasured strengths, or the additional salary may motivate those who receive it to perform at higher levels than similarly qualified teachers who do not receive the extra pay,” according to Henry. The differences in spending on regular instruction between high schools serving high-poverty populations and those with the fewest low-income students are about $300 per pupil. Expenditures for supplies and media services do have a positive effect, albeit smaller. The findings indicate that materials and supplies make a difference when measures of teacher quality, such as experience and education, are taken into account. Perhaps surprisingly, spending more on non-regular instruction – supplementary instruction (outside the normal school day and week) and student services (guidance, psychological, health, speech, and related services) – are associated with lower student test scores. Taking this into account, total per-pupil expenditures had little effect. In fact, the high schools with the largest percentage of low-income students spent, on average, a total of approximately $1,500 more per student than high schools serving the lowest percentage. Leadership was also a factor. There were distinctly different leadership styles in schools with high concentrations of poverty who were “beating the odds” and those labeled as chronically low performing, according to Charles Thompson, professor of educational leadership in the College of Education at East Carolina University who also participated in the study. “In the high schools that are ‘beating the odds,’ we observed principals who instilled a strong sense of commitment to student performance and educators who held each other responsible for students’ success on the end-of-course exams. In these schools, the educators found creative ways to offer students multiple opportunities to learn the material within a caring and orderly environment,” Thompson said. Henry and Thompson presented the findings on April 2, 2008, to the North Carolina State Board of Education. FPG contact: Tracy Zimmerman, (919) 966-0867, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it News Services contact: Clinton Colmenares (919) 843-1991, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |