What Impacts Can We Expect from School Spending Policy? Evidence from Evaluations in the United States

Abstract

We conduct meta-analysis on a comprehensive set of studies of the impacts of US K-12 public school spending on student outcomes–estimating average marginal impacts and heterogeneity across contexts. On average, a policy increasing spending by $1,000 per pupil for four years improves test scores by 0.0316σ and college-going by 2.8 pp. Moving beyond averages, we use estimates of heterogeneity and observable policy differences to produce informative probability distributions of policy effects. Effects are smaller for economically advantaged populations, marginal effects of capital spending are similar to noncapital, and effects are similar across baseline spending levels and geography. Confounding and publication biases are minimal.(JEL H75, I21, I22, I26, I28)