Pathways to Inequality: Between-District Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Expenditures

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Victoria Sosina, Stanford University; Ericka Weathers, Pennsylvania State University

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  Stata-do-files 08/23/2019 07:15:PM
  data-files 08/23/2019 07:17:PM
README_190822_final.docx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 17.7 KB 08/23/2019 03:06:PM

Project Citation: 

Sosina, Victoria, and Weathers, Ericka. Pathways to Inequality: Between-District Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Expenditures. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-08-23. https://doi.org/10.3886/E111546V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Recent causal evidence connects levels of per pupil spending and short- and long-term student outcomes. This evidence further suggests that specific types of spending may mediate the relationship between expenditures and student outcomes. Yet race remains related to funding disparities and schooling experiences in ways that raise concerns about the role of school finance in perpetuating racial opportunity gaps. We explore this potential source of educational inequality by asking how racial segregation and racial socioeconomic disparities are related to racial disparities in school district spending over time. We use 15 years of data from the School Funding Fairness Data System on school district expenditures and demographics to explore patterns of racial/ethnic segregation and racial disparities across six categories of per pupil expenditures. We find that changes in racial/ethnic segregation within a state from 1999 through 2013 are associated with racial disparities in spending, even after accounting for disparities in poverty.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources United States Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences. National Center for Education Statistics (R305B140009); Karr Family Graduate Fellowship

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms school district finance; racial segregation; socioeconomic disparities; school district spending
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage national
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1999 – 2013
Universe:  View help for Universe traditional U.S. school districts
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) administrative records data

Methodology

Sampling:  View help for Sampling Restricted to traditional school districts with non-missing data from 1999 through 2013. District-year observations are excluded for districts serving non-traditional populations (e.g., juvenile justice), that are located outside of the 50 states (e.g., territories), or are charter districts. The District of Columbia and Hawaii are not included, because they each comprise one district. District-years with outlier values for total per pupil expenditures, missing expenditure data, or no 5- to 17-year-olds according to SAIPE estimates are also dropped
Data Source:  View help for Data Source School Funding Fairness Data System (SFFDS) - Local Education Agency (LEA) Fiscal Database (version 1.0)(Baker, Srikanth, & Weber, 2016)  

Common Core of Data’s (CCD) Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data and  Local Education Agency Universe Survey Data (National Center for Education Statistics)

Comparable Wage Index (CWI) f(Busch School of Government and Public Service)
Unit(s) of Observation:  View help for Unit(s) of Observation state-years
Geographic Unit:  View help for Geographic Unit states

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Published Versions

V1 [2019-08-23]

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