Din, Alexander2021-09-222021-09-222016Din, 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.htmlhttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/23017The 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.4 pagesen-USThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.Public Domain Mark 1.0This 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.http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/Text