Schools

Does Spending More on Education Lead to Better Performance?

A comparison of State Department of Education data might surprise you.

While more funding can help local schools develop new programs and educational opportunities, data from the State Department of Education (SDE) shows that it does not have much effect on how students perform on standardized tests.

A comparison of 2013 standardized test performance rankings and per pupil spending for the 2012-13 academic year shows an interesting lack of correlation, with the state’s lowest and highest spending districts both offering Excelling schools, the SDE’s highest classification.
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Download the PDF above for a visual look at the data to help follow along with the analysis.
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A look at the schools coded by classification and sorted by per pupil spending shows an even distribution of Excelling, Progressing and Transitioning schools across all spending levels.

The majority of Review, Focus and Turnaround schools — those needing the most intervention — are in larger cities like Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain, New Haven, New London and Waterbury — and are also equally spread along the spending range.

The distribution of all six classifications is almost the same for schools spending less than the average of $14,961 as it is for schools spending more, with the latter actually trending just slightly worse.

(Assigning numerical values to the classifications, with Excelling at 1 through Focus at 6, the average for schools in districts spending less than $14,961 is 2.68; the average for schools in districts spending more than $14,961 is 2.77. The statewide average is 2.71.)

The lowest spending school district, Ellington, has six schools in the top three tiers and none in the bottom three. The highest, Cornwall, is classified as Excelling. Conversely, two districts with the most Review, Focus and Turnaround schools, Hartford and New Britain, are in the top and bottom 20 in spending, respectively.

The only trend is in the 15 districts spending more than $18,475 per pupil — halfway between the lowest, $11,234, and the highest, $25,716 — which are all classified in the top three tiers.

Learn more about the classifications system and how your local schools performed using this interactive map and searchable database.


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