School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement

2018/03/26 by Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach · 1 voice · 6 citations
Social Sciences · #Higher Education Research Studies #Local Government Finance and Decentralization #School Choice and Performance

paper · pdf · doi:10.1257/app.20160567

openalex publication_date 2018/03/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

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. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I24, I28)

Citations

• Assessing the Effects of School Resources on Student Performance: An Update

Cited by

• Austerity Harmed Student Achievement
• Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of Public School Funding Policies and Private External Fundraising
• Pretest with Caution: Event-Study Estimates after Testing for Parallel Trends
• Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects
• The Impact of Public School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice
• How to Reform Without Reforming: School District Racial Composition and Pennsylvania’s “Fair” Funding Formula

Discussions

• Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., & Schanzenbach, D. W. (2018). School finance reform and the distribution of student achievement. American Economic Journal Applied Economics, 10(2), 1–26. doi.org/10.1257 [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]

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• The Determinants of Early Investments in Urban School Systems in the United States
• The Politics of School Funding: How State Political Ideology is Associated With the Allocation of Revenue to School Districts
• Do More Public Sector School Resources Increase Learning Outcomes?
• Diffusing “Destandardization” Reforms across Educational Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Case of the World Bank, 1965 to 2020