Underfunding and Inefficiency in Low-Performing Schools

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 marked a significant shift in federal education policy toward a more supportive approach aimed at improving outcomes in a smaller subset of the nation’s lowest-performing schools. States were required to identify low-performing schools as needing Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) or Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI/ATSI), while allowing flexibility in how to intervene in and support these schools to promote improvement.

Our research is grounded in a broad theory of economic production, which suggests that outcomes—such as student achievement—are influenced by two key factors: the quantity of resources (e.g., funding, staff, materials) and the efficiency with which those inputs are used. In the context of education, this theory implies that improving student outcomes can result from increased resources, utilizing existing resources more efficiently, or both. This also means that schools that do not meet performance expectations are either underfunded, using their existing resources inefficiently, or both.

This project uses Ohio as a case study to examine the extent to which student outcomes in low-performing schools identified under ESSA can be attributed to both the level of resources provided and the efficiency with which those resources are used and to determine how much additional funding low-performing schools would need to meaningfully improve student outcomes. 
 

Research Questions

The following research questions guided our investigation into how schools identified for improvement under ESSA—particularly CSI schools—are resources and how efficiently they operate:

• How do student outcomes and student demographics of CSI and TSI/ATSI schools compare to non-identified schools?
• To what extent do CSI and TSI/ATSI schools receive additional funding and spend more than non-identified schools?
• How much additional funding would be required to support meaningful gains in student performance in schools identified for improvement?
• To what extent is poor performance in schools identified for improvement the result of inadequate resources versus inefficient use of existing resources?
   

Key Findings

• Our findings reveal that CSI schools, which disproportionately serve high-need student populations, are both underfunded and inefficient.
• Nearly one-third of the performance gap between CSI schools and the statewide average could be closed through improved efficiency alone.
• However, even after improvements to efficiency, CSI schools would likely remain low-performing.
• For meaningful improvement, CSI schools require additional funding amounts that far exceed the $400 per pupil increase these schools currently receive.