The achievement gap between white and non-white students: a conceptual  (Page 13/19)

Achievement gap and monetary spending

Coleman (1966) reported that spending great amounts of money to balance academic achievement was “unimportant” (Coleman, 1970, p. 245). Investigations of the impact of government, state, and local spending, and academic achievement decreased as a result of Coleman’s findings (Wenglinsky, 1997). Researchers focused their investigation on other factors such as family, ethnicity, and gender. Yet, researchers have stated that examinations of monetary spending within districts and schools determined that money does matter when considering academic achievement (Condron&Roscigno, 2003; Elliot, 1998; Wenglinsky, 1997). Wenglinsky (1997) communicated that academic achievement was not directly associated with spending on students. Yet, increases in spending on instructional materials and administrative spending raised teacher-student ratios, which influenced academic achievement among students. Crampton (2009) commented that student achievement was statistically significant in relation to school infrastructure and human capital. Human and social capital accounted for over 55% and 77% of the variance in academic achievement among fourth and eighth grade students in math and reading. McFadden (2009) reported increased academic achievement among minority students within Miami’s 39 lowest performing schools. An increase in monetary spending, extended reading and math periods, smaller group instruction, teacher compensation, and additional professional development created an increase in student success. Lee and Wong (2004) revealed that districts and schools with a large proportion of minority students tended to spend less on education, compared to school districts with a White majority.

Yet, some researchers contend that school funding has a statistically insignificant effect on the success of students, as measured by standardized testing, and does not close the achievement gap among minorities (Ceci, Papierno,&Mueller-Johnson, 2002; Johnston, 1997). Hill (2008) disputed that school districts and administrators did not know how to use the money allocated to meet the needs of students who were immigrants and who were from low income families. Thus, Hill argued that money was not the reason for low academic achievement among students, rather a lack of evaluations and strict accountability toward the programs being implemented were responsible. Evers and Clopton (2006) also contended that school districts were not accountable for their spending and frivolously spent money on curriculum programs that were ineffective at meeting the needs of low-achieving students. The researchers compared five school districts in five different states (i.e., New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Missouri) whose student expenditure far exceeded the national average and were low performing in their national standardized exams. Regardless of the large amounts of spending per student (between $8,000-20,000), these five school districts were unable to increase academic success among low performing minority students.