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Local School Expenditures and Educational Quality: A Correlation Analysis
Author(s) -
Stinson Thomas F.,
Krahmer Edward F.
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.2307/1238046
Subject(s) - citation , quality (philosophy) , library science , service (business) , sociology , political science , economics , computer science , economy , philosophy , epistemology
A MAJOR factor contributing to the viability of any community is the quality of its educational system. This factor takes on an added dimension in rural areas because many of today's national social problems are thought to be due to the inadequate elementary and secondary education provided to residents of rural areas. Urban problems have been compounded by the migration of poorly educated workers from rural America. And, at the same time, efforts to develop rural economies and reverse the population flow are often hindered by low quality schools. To compound the problems, as rural communities have declined the resources necessary for providing adequate education to the remaining residents have diminished and the quality of the school system has continued to deteriorate. Because of its importance, there has been considerable research done on ways to measure and improve education. Many have focused on the field of educational finance, assuming that the amount a school district spends has a very strong impact on the quality of the local school system. Benchmark surveys have been made showing national or regional differences in spending for education. Attempts have also been made to determine which social and economic characteristics are associated with increased levels of spending for education, such as those of Miner [2] and Shapiro [4]. Finally, there have been attempts to determine whether economies of scale exist for education, and if they do, to determine the optimum size school. Both Hansen [1] and Riew [3] have completed this type of study. A major problem facing all research in this field has been obtaining an adequate measure of the quality of the local educational system. Usually researchers have been forced to assume that per capita or per pupil expenditures bear some direct relationship to education quality and to continue their research on that assumption. There has, however, been almost no testing of the hypothesis that expenditure per pupil or expenditure per capita is a useful and accurate measure of the quality of education. This paper reports the results of a test of the assumption that per pupil expenditure bears a significant relationship to educational quality. In addition, the relationships between several alternative measures of expenditure and educational quality were examined.