Data as Evidence: Educational Funding and Student Achievement

Though I am currently working towards a degree in Biology, my ultimate goal is to use that degree to become a secondary school teacher. As part of my training, I have gotten to look at many of the issues currently facing the American education system. Many of these issues center around how to best teach the nation's children. Should we practice structured formal schooling, or take a more child-directed approach? How should the school day be structured? Are standardized testing and curricula a benefit to students or a hindrance? These issues are not always social in nature. Many of them are based on educational theories and some are very much focused on the individual. For this post, I'd like to step away from these questions and look more closely at an educational issue that is highly social and political. Funding for education is a common debate topic, and many would probably be surprised to find out that it varies quite a lot from state to state, and even city to city. I would argue that the less funding that is available to schools, the lower the student achievement. This seems logical, considering that less funding could mean fewer supplies, lower quality teachers, and out-of-date technology. However, I want to take a quantitative approach to the issue, and use data as evidence. I also want to discuss some of the challenges that come with using data in sociology. The data and graphics I use in this post will come from the Kids Count Data Center, a website that collects and provides data detailing the well-being of children in the United States. I will also include the URL to all the graphics I use at the end of this post.

 The map at right shows the per-pupil expenditure for education per state in the U.S. The darkest states put the most money towards schools, and the lightest states spend the least. Immediately what stands out is the divide between north and south. Almost the entire southern half of the country is in the lowest expenditure bracket. The northern half varies, but it has almost no states in that lowest bracket. Looking more closely, the Northeast region spends the most. We will keep these in mind when looking at a few factors measuring student achievement.

Never Finished  High School

Attained a Bachelor's Degree

Now take a look at these maps and compare them. They show, per state, the educational attainment of adults ages 25-34. The darker colors show the highest percentages of adults in the age ranges, and the lighter colors show the lowest percentage. These maps align pretty exactly with the information on expenditure. In the southern half of the United States, which has the lowest expenditure, the highest percentage of adults have not finished high school. In the northern states, the higher percentage of adults in each state attained some form of college education. Notably, only in the Northeast were the highest percentage of adults earning graduate degrees.

Attained a Graduate Degree

These maps show a pretty clear correlation between per-pupil expenditure and educational attainment. However, this does not necessarily mean that spending more money on students guarantees they go on to get a post-secondary education.  This is where using data in sociology becomes challenging. This issue, like most others sociologists study, is multi-faceted and complex. For example, I originally set out to measure student achievement in relation to education expenditure. Is educational attainment a good measure of student achievement? Would it be better to use the standardized test scores of children who are actually in school right now? There could be a variety of lurking variables at play. What if, for whatever reason, students in the south can't afford to attend college? Maybe there are some cultural influences to consider. It is entirely possible that students from the north, and especially the Northeast, are pressured and expected to go to college. Just think about how many Ivy League schools are in the Northeast, and how some parents might expect their kids go get into them, In the south, maybe there is less pressure to go to college and more of an expectation to get a job right out of high school. To make my point in fewer words, there are countless potential causes for this one correlation. Using data as evidence can reveal patterns and useful information, but a vivid sociological imagination is required to form connections, make sense of it all, and question what is there.


Links to the webpages for graphics:

•  http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/Map/5199-per-pupil-educational-expenditures-adjusted-for-regional-cost-differences?loc=1&loct=1#2/any/false/868/any/11678/Orange/
• http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/Map/6294-educational-attainment-of-population-ages-25-to-34?loc=1&loct=2#2/any/false/36/1311/13090/Orange/