The decision for parents to spend on theirchildren for education can be a challenging choice to make. The debate for improvingpublic education has been an ongoing conversation for several years. Resourcesthat public schools provide are coming from government funded controlledprograms. Whether the government is allocating the right disbursements to thesepublic’s schools and how much can be argued. The lack of funding is heard byteachers and people in the public school districts but very little action hasbeen taken place to resolve the problem. The government chooses to invest billionsof dollars to fund public school education. Simply increasing governmentspending on education may not be a direct increase in academic achievement forstudents across the nation.
This paper will analyze the effects of publicschool expenditures in accordance to academic achievement. To get a better understanding of this topic,I assessed the cross sectional dataset for the 2008/2009 school year collectedfrom public sources, containing district-level data for school districts inKentucky. Data The data used is public and statisticson district expenditures, enrollment, staffing, and academic proficiency ratesfor 8th grade math was found from the Kentucky Department ofEducation (KDE) website. I acquired data on test scores of Kentucky CoreContent Test (KCCT) for the areas of math, reading, science, social studies, andwriting. The KCCT is administered for grades 3-8 and 10-12, which there arefour testing levels to attain: distinguished, proficient, apprentice, andnovice. Information from the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) included the amountof students that received free and reduced-price lunch (FRL), individualizededucation plans (IEP), classified as limited-English proficiency (LEP). I choseto use the results from the KCCT examination to determine a common trend tobetter understand the data. The results show that “tstd” shows the highestlevel of distinguished students.
The next two levels is where a majority of thestudents scored in the “tstp” and the “tsta” categories (proficient and apprentice).The novice accounted for the lowest amount of students but shows that work canbe done for improvement. Table1:Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT) MethodologyThe variables in theequation above includes the experience of the staff, percentages, and rural andurban. This model equation does not sufficentially detail the allocation of thevarious sources of funding and might hold some bias. The dependent variablesare the percentages: pctfrl, pctlep, pctiep. It is vital for the effects of the students’ academic achievementto be fixed and controlled.
testpd = ?o + ?1expinstrpp + ?2distname + ?3expinstrstaffpp + ?4pctfrl+ ?5 pctlep + ?6 pctiep+ ? 7rural + ?8 urban + ?9 tsta + ?10 tstd + ?11 tstn + ?12 tstp + uIn the new equation I added the scorescategories which those would be the dependent variables with regards to thestudent’s level of academic achievement. I decided to add another variable tomake clarity of the equation. Adding another variable will cause the expectedsign on the independent variable to have a positive impact. The error term mustbe independent Results When running my regression resultsin negative coefficients for the school year, which are significant at the 5%level. The effect shows that increasing funding would not have a positiveeffect on students’ academic performances but actually a minor negative one.
After adding a controlled variable tothe model the estimated coefficients, the results were significant at the 5%level. The coefficients in the above table still continue to be negative butthey did move closer to zero. When the dummy variables were added the estimatedcoefficients for the revenue stayed constant. With the findings from my results itis a key thing to process that it does not necessarily matter how much fundingyou receive but how the students are determined to use the funding. Funding isimportant for schools but could be not as influential as many may portray.Establishing a good fundamental educational system and habits for the studentswould help more with the development of the students.
Whether the student livesin a rural or urban area there is no conclusive evidence that they will scorehigher or lower schools on the examinations they are given. Using a crosssectional model understanding the various factors that takes into account forthe funding. Conclusion Throughoutmy extensive research I have come to assumption that there is an effect ofschool funding on a students’ academic achievement. Opposed from what I oncethought before doing the research it can be found that school funding can holda negative effect on students’ academic achievement. With the specific areatarget in my research (Kentucky), I was able to see that improving studentstest results were not as simple as it can seem. I would have to suggest thefunds be instilled in specific programs that could benefit the students thatare not making satisfactory grades.
Finding the solution to raising theeducational standard for all students is a tough task and just increasing thegeneral funds to schools may keep the solution from being found. References Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. Introductory Econometrics aModern Approach. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2017.
