Teacher Quality and School Resegregation: A Resource Allocation Case Study

Abstract

This article uses a school finance equity framework to examine the distribution of resources across the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) during a policy shift toward neighborhood-based student assignment between 1999 and 2004. Findings from this analysis confirm that MNPS schools are resegregating. Additionally, this study finds that, although Nashville students from poor and minority backgrounds received additional resources from the district in the form of reduced pupil/teacher ratios, they faced challenges in the form of higher percentages of inexperienced teachers and reduced average teacher salaries. Finally, this analysis provides evidence to suggest that these inequitable relationships worsen slightly over time.

Notes

1. A number of proxy measures have been introduced to examine teacher quality, including verbal ability, subject matter knowledge, experience, credentials, and practices (Darling-Hammond, 2000). For additional perspectives on this question, see Loeb and Page (2000) and Ballou and Podgursky (2000).

2. Although this study examines changes from 1999 to 2004, the student assignment information is provided for 1998 in order to demonstrate that there were no substantive policy changes before 1999, the first year of this study. In effect, 1999 will serve as a baseline in this study.

3. MNPS allowed students to grandfather into their current schools to avoid the additional burden of multiple school changes brought on by shifting school attendance patterns.

4. Practically, this dataset examines variation across individual students. Operationally, regression analysis will be school-based with student enrollment weights.

5. While standardized betas are reported in the findings to allow comparisons across variables, tables presenting the full analysis with multiple models, unstandardized coefficients, F statistics, and adjusted R-squared statistics can be found in the Appendix.

6. No other study has endeavored to report levels of segregation by free-lunch status, so no comparisons are available.

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