The Fiscal Disparity and Achievement Gap between Extremely Wealthy and Poor School Districts in Illinois

Abstract

This study investigates the achievement gap and horizontal disparity of schools’ funding by exploring and comparing the differences of funding between extremely wealthy and poor school districts in Illinois before funding reforms took place on August 2017. We find that the students in wealthiest school districts had an average of 51% higher proficiency on standardized tests than did the students in extremely poor districts. The extremely poor school districts received about $4582 less per student than the wealthiest school districts, based on data from total funding sources in 2014. Our results indicate that federal and state funding did not have sufficient equalization impact on interdistrict property tax funding disparity.