The impacts of school resources on student achievement have been debated for half a century with no consensus reached among scholars. This topic has received increasing attention under the backdrop of both the educational accountability movement and the economic downturn of recent years. Using student and school-level longitudinal data from Florida, this study examines the impacts of school resources on student achievement in math. The study also examines whether and how the impacts of school resources vary for students with different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and whether the marginal effects of school inputs diminish with input levels.
Overall, this study does not find consistent evidence showing a causal relation between added school expenditure and student achievement in math within school-and-principals. However, the results indicate that differences in per student expenditures are statistically related to differences in student achievement in math across schools and principals at the elementary and middle school levels. Since these correlations may stem from the impacts of unobserved characteristics of students, schools and principals, further investigations are necessary to make firm conclusions.
This study calls more attention to the way current resouces are used. More specifically, neither a reduction in class size nor an increase in average years of teacher experience may improve student academic performance. However, an increase in the percentages of teachers with advanced degrees may raise student achievement in math at the elementary and high school levels. The percentages of classes being taught by in-field teachers also matters for student achievement at high school level. This study also indicates that the impacts of per student expenditure and class size may vary for students with different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, thus more attention should to be given to the special needs of these disadvantaged groups. However, since some conditional funding programs are not considered in this study, further investigations need to be conducted for more definitive conclusions.
