Does Money Matter? Regression-Discontinuity Estimates from Education Finance Reform in Massachusetts

Jonathan Guryan ()

No 8269, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The paper studies a typical state-level education finance equalization scheme, and considers two questions. First, what fraction of state education aid is spent on schools? And second, does increased educational funding for historically low-spending districts lead to improved student achievement? Estimates based on variation in spending caused by state aid formulas suggest that 50 to 75 cents of each dollar of education aid were spent on schools. Estimates also suggest that increased spending improved 4 th -grade test scores, but show no effect on 8 th -grade test scores. Further analysis shows that increases in 4 th -grade average test scores were associated with improved performance by low-scoring students.

Date: 2001-05
Note: CH LS
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8269.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8269

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8269
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().