School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement

Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

NBER Working Paper No. 22011
Issued in February 2016, Revised in July 2016
NBER Program(s):Children, Economics of Education, Labor Studies, Public Economics

We study the impact of post-1990 school finance reforms, during the so-called “adequacy” era, on absolute and relative spending and achievement in low-income school districts. 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.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w22011

Published: Julien Lafortune & Jesse Rothstein & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2018. "School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol 10(2), pages 1-26. citation courtesy of

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