Pupil Costs Research Articles

A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Summer Reading Programs Implemented Under State Guidelines

This study investigated the costs of different summer reading programs and compared costs to the benefits of summer school as a way to avoid retaining students not reading proficiently at the end of third grade. Per pupil costs ranged from US$1,665 to US$2,194. The average cost was US$1,887 (range: US$266-US$5,552) with 82% of overall expenses attributable to personnel. Results indicate that offering summer reading programs could save schools across the state a total of between US$70.6 million and US$75.5 million in expenses related to providing an extra year of school had all eligible students been retained in third grade instead. This equates to about US$4 in benefit for every dollar invested in summer programs.

What Would it Cost to Coach Every New Principal? An Estimate Using Statewide Personnel Data

In this paper, I use Levin and McEwan’s (2001) cost feasibility approach and personnel data obtained from the Superintendent of Public Instruction to estimate the cost of providing coaching support to every newly hired principal in Washington State. Based on this descriptive analysis, I estimate that the cost to provide leadership coaching to every newly hired principal as an induction support would range between $153,000 and $845,000 per year representing a per pupil cost between $4.01 and $12.35, respectively, depending on the amount each leadership coach receives in compensation. A more conservative approach that provides coaching support only to newly hired principals working in high poverty schools would cost the state between $143,975 and $443,000 per year representing a per pupil cost between $4.20 and $12.92, respectively, depending on the amount each leadership coach receives in compensation. Implications for coaching and principal professional development are discussed within the context of policy decisions. In particular, the article considers whether coaching is a financially feasible professional development strategy and how new information about the per pupil cost of coaching might better inform ongoing policy discussions related to leadership coaching.

A 50-State Strategy to Achieve School Finance Adequacy

This article estimates the costs of school finance adequacy in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. by applying the recommendations from an evidence-based model to the student characteristics of each individual state. Using two different prices, (a) the national average teacher salaries adjusted by a comparable wage index and (b) individual state teacher salaries, the authors estimate per pupil costs of adequacy. Results suggest that in 30 states additional resources are needed to reach the funding level for the evidence-based model. The findings do not make adjustments for diseconomies resulting from large numbers of small schools or districts or other state preferences for educational services that could lead to individual state variations from the authors’ findings.

Mission matters: The cost of small high schools revisited

With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. We use data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. We find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission—comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally sized comprehensive schools. We also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes.

Assessing the Costs of Adequacy in California Public Schools: A Cost Function Approach

In this study, a cost function is used to estimate the costs for California districts to meet the achievement goals set out for them by the state. I calculate estimates of base costs (i.e., per pupil costs in a district with relatively low levels of student need) and marginal costs (i.e., the additional costs associated with specific student characteristics) for poverty, English learners, and special education and then compare these estimates with the findings from cost studies in other states, which have used a variety of methods, and with other cost studies in California. Because of institutional constraints in California, the cost function estimate of total costs to achieve adequacy (which relies critically on the estimated relationship between spending and outcomes) may be quite imprecise. Nevertheless, the cost function estimates of base and marginal costs are not inconsistent with other studies, though they fall on the low end of the spectrum.

Funding at-risk compensatory programs: An urban high school case study

A Texas urban high school with a 98 percent minority student enrollment was selected to conduct a micro-finance analysis on site-based at-risk per pupil costs. A process was developed to define site-based state compensatory education (SCE) and to account for all students receiving direct and indirect state compensatory education services. Program costs data were analyzed to develop a relationship between full-time equivalent (FTE) state categorical program costs and regular education program costs. At-risk student background characteristics were defined using a parent home survey, conducted with a sample of twenty at-risk students and twenty regular education students. The data revealed that 68 percent of the students exhibited one or more of the state-defined at-risk variables; the highest program costs produced the highest achievement: and based on student backgroud characteristics, all of the students, including regular funded students, were at risk.

Measuring the costs of magnet schools

Magnet schools use their specialized curricula and prestige to attract pupils from a wide geographical area within large, often urban, school districts. It has long been debated whether magnet schools foster academic excellence and desegregation. The issue of whether these presumed benefits justify the extra personnel, capital, and overhead costs of magnet schools has not received as much attention, mainly because of the lack of valid and reliable cost data. Based on a sample of school districts, this study determined that magnet schools in general cost more than nonmagnets; however, most of these extra costs tended to be fixed. As magnet school enrollments increased, their per pupil costs decreased to a point near and often below per pupil costs at nonmagnets. Finally, the study found that magnet schools with higher costs tended to have higher levels of integration and educational quality than magnet schools with lower costs.

The pension subsidy of educational inequality

Public school teachers receive on retirement a pension typically equaling 75% of the average salary earned during the three peak years. While the teachers pay part of the costs of their defined benefit pension through payroll deductions, most of the cost is subsidized by the state. The pension subsidy, a far from neglible component of the per pupil cost of instruction, is particularly high in those school districts that pay high salaries and enjoy low student/teacher ratios. It is a regressive subsidy highly correlated with school district income and wealth. Several alternative reform measures are considered.

Epilepsy and the inner city schools: a school-based program that makes a difference.

A program was developed within the Baltimore City School System to comply with U.S. Public Laws 94-142 and 94-484. The program provided assessment, appropriate placement, counseling, work experience, and epilepsy education. Self-identified students were primarily black and poor, more likely to be either 1 year behind in reading or in special education. Seventy percent had psychosocial problems but for less than half were the problems directly related to seizures. The program decreased the nonpromotion rate and the dropout rate to less than half of that for the school system as a whole, and cut in half the percentage of youths who were unemployed or not in school or training 1 and 2 years after graduation. The per pupil cost was 10% greater than current expenditures for the system as a whole.

Summer Laboratory Experience for Children: Professional Growth for Teachers

The problems involved in planning and running a successful summer school program are compounded by limited funds. As state funding in Illinois was eliminated, the most extensive summer school programs, those which featured a combination of remediation and enrichment, began to disappear. Without state funding, local school districts saw their per pupil costs soar to prohibitive levels and school districts began to question what should constitute a viable summer experience.

The Relationship of School Size and Rate of School Plant Utilization to Cost Variations of Maintenance and Operation

The effects of school size and school plant utilization on pupil costs of maintenance and operation (M & O) in a large city school system in the South were investigated. School size is significantly and negatively related to pupil costs of M & O. Utilization rate has a similar and stronger cost impact.

Economies of Scale in Iowa High School Operations

This study attempts to shed some light on the cost and output functions of the Iowa public school system (as of 1962-63). As a proxy for high school quality, incremental test scores on the Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED) are used. The estimated per pupil cost functions suggest the existence of significant economies of scale for the Iowa sample of 377 high school districts. When a parabolic cost function is utilized, an optimal high school size (in terms of the number of pupils in average daily attendance) can be estimated. Confidence limits for such an optimum are also calculated.

An Evaluation of Educational Opportunities for the Negro Adolescent in Alabama, II

1. Larger schools with increased facilities in centers where small high schools now are, in order to give their pupils the advantages of varied curricula, specialization in instruction, homogeneous grouping of pupils were desirable; principals with training, experience and more opportunity to supervise the instructional program and to conduct professional courses and experimental projects; reduced per pupil cost in equipment, maintenance and instruction, and the inspiration and holding power of larger numbers. 2. Additional schools. County surveys indicate the need for establishment now or in the near future of a few additional senior high schools, and of a large number of junior high schools. The ultimate determining factor in the establishment of an additional school should be whether or not all the children in the area can and will be provided for without it. 3. The small schools should be able to employ and to hold teachers who have preparation, experience, and ability at least equal to those of teachers in larger centers. Justice, equality of opportunity, and a proper appreciation of our human resources, all demand relief from the present conditions. The evil of excessive turnover of teachers is often aggravated rather than cured when teachers of exceptional merit are employed and given opportunity to develop in small schools. Some of the obvious causes of this condition are: (a) Lack of salary schedules by which tenure, successful experience or meritorious services are recognized; (b) Lack of opportunity for advancement of position in the school or system; (c) Lack of opportunity for professional growth; (d) Absence of assurance of tenure on the basis of merit; (e) Impossibility of doing the most successful teaching; (f) Unsatisfactory living conditions; and sometimes (g) Injustice and inhumanity in treatment accorded. While the foregoing are very real handicaps, present in varying degrees, it is by no means intended to leave what would be a false impression. Some good teachers are remaining in these schools rendering invaluable service. The injustice, however, is the more manifest and the hurt to the schools no less real by reason of this fact. 4. Further development of the service of the schools to the individual pupils and to the communities through:

Problems of Music Teaching in the Schools

ANY criticisms have been made upon school music, and we have tried to place the blame on outside interests instead of asking ourselves, as music teachers, whether or not we are to blame. The growth of school music has been rapid-too rapid in fact; and when growth is too rapid there is always apt to be a relapse. This has tended to produce a poor type of teacher. The demand for music teachers has been so great some who were poorly prepared often secured employment. Usually the teachers are trained musically, but are unable to associate music with education. Also, when untrained and unprofessional people are at the helm, a poorly organized curriculum often results. Poor systems of this and doing that have developed. Some demand every student hold his book just so on the desk, and the first finger of the right hand be used to tap the time; must be held just so. In other words, many of our people have merely developed tricks in methodology. Some of the music has been curtailed under pretense of cutting expense, and music is believed by some boards to be a frill. The expense, in the instrumental field, has been high due to the pupil cost and equipment. Instrumental music benefits relatively few students in the school. However, as a purely personal observation, it seems often when teachers are dismissed, a school board, endeavoring to reduce expenses, will look about and decide what teacher must go. Then they look for the weakest teacher in the school, teaching the newest subject in the curriculum, and dismiss teacher. I have failed to find the high type of music teacher who is producing good results dismissed from his or her position. If there are such cases, they are very rare.

Factors Determining the per Pupil Cost of Instruction in High Schools

The first fundamental purpose of the study here reported was to provide additional insight into the factors determining the per pupil cost of instruction in high schools. Costs of instruction were determined by salaries alone. The factors considered are entirely within administrative control, but the more obscure factors and the exact relations between factors are rather generally neglected. The second fundamental purpose of the study was to provide a useful method for the detailed analysis and exposition of factors affecting costs in particular schools. The method will also make it possible for the administrator to calculate definitely in advance what will be the effect on per pupil cost of any proposed variation in any of the factors. In order that these underlying purposes might be attained, the following immediate and specific objectives of the study were set up: (i) to determine and compare per pupil costs (based on salaries alone) in the school years 1925-26 and 1931-32 for (a) the teaching of regular subjects, (b) administrative and supervisory services, and (c) the teaching of music and physical education; (2) to evaluate the principal factors causing differences in the costs for the teaching of regular subjects for each of the two years. The particular factors evaluated were: (i) the salaries of teachers, (2) the size of classes, (3) the number of class meetings in the weekly programs of pupils, and (4) the number of class meetings in the weekly programs of teachers. Slightly less direct and specific factors evaluated were (i) the length of the class period and (2) the spread of the curriculum.