An Urban Myth? New Evidence of Equity, Adequacy and the Efficiency of Educational Resources

In this article, we offer an empirical rejoinder to the oft-told story that large urban districts, like Philadelphia, are inefficient. We situate our study during the very short period in Pennsylvania’s recent history when efforts were dedicated to addressing the inequitable distribution of resources through a fair funding formula and to increasing the amount of resources available for education spending. Even in the presence of a funding formula, school districts like Philadelphia (SDP) with its large percentage of low-income students and English language learners were disproportionately burdened. Unsurprisingly, the SDP, like many districts across the nation, did not receive sufficient resources to educate its students. However, we find that contrary to conventional wisdom, SDP did more per pupil with the resources at its disposal than the average peer district in terms of student poverty and achievement. Disciplines Economics | Education Economics | Education Policy Comments View on the CPRE website. This working paper is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_workingpapers/1 An Urban Myth? New Evidence on Equity, Adequacy and the Efficiency of Educational Resources Matthew P. Steinberg Assistant Professor of Education Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania 3700 Walnut Street, Office 408 Philadelphia, PA 19104 Email: [email protected] Phone: (215) 898-9336 Rand Quinn Assistant Professor of Education Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania 3700 Walnut Street, Office 407 Philadelphia, PA 19104 Email: [email protected] Phone: (215) 898-9330