Leveling the Playing Field: School District Spending in Diverse Communities
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Date
2016
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Citation of Original Publication
Din, Alexander; Leveling the Playing Field: School District Spending in Diverse Communities; A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 18, Number 2, 2016; https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol18num2/article9.html
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This is a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0
This is a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Subjects
Abstract
The United States is the only industrialized nation that funds its public schools from local- and state-level taxes (Payne and Biddle, 1999). School resource disparities across districts reflect economic differences between the wealthy and poor. A school district’s spending per student in each district is based on the economic needs of the students or the school as a whole, which typically is based on median household income. School districts typically determine how much funding each school receives by calculating a cost per student that is the ratio of total school cost to the number of students. The cost-per-student ratio is then divided by the median household income in that district to derive a spending-to-income (SIC) ratio—
SIC ratio = [cost per student/median household income].
Using Montgomery County, Maryland, as an example, these costs can be visualized in a spatial analysis to determine if spending is distributed according to income differences.