Data Analysis - Educational Inequality

When it comes to education, many people believe that increased levels of per-pupil spending are positively correlated with higher overall student outcomes. Upon comparison of five various Ohio school districts, ranging from rural to city settings, it is clear that this belief is not always the case and just because a certain school district pays more per-pupil does not mean that the educational outcomes will necessarily be higher. After taking data from miscellaneous aspects of each district, such as the number of state indicators and the performance index scores and comparing them to the instructional and total expenditures per-pupil, it is clear that while money does play a large part, there are other factors at work here. When doing this comparison the number of state indicators, which is the number given out based on the percentage of students who received a proficient score on a state assessment, and the performance index score, which is the weighted average of each student’s academic achievements during the academic year, including tested and untested subjects, were extracted from the Ohio Department of Education’s 2010-2011 reports and compared to the districts spending on each student in various ways. What has been found by comparing this data is that while the higher achieving districts, such as Beachwood, did tend to spend quite a large amount of money per-pupil those districts that were essentially failing, such as Cleveland, also spent quite a large amount of money, so one cannot definitively say that spending more money automatically means a school district will increase its odds of obtaining higher educational outcomes. The five school districts chosen were chosen based on the type of district they were, with Beachwood being a more affluent suburban district, Cleveland being an inner-city district, Black River and Wellington being more rural districts and Elyria being a more lower class suburban district. By looking at the number of state