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Abstract

America's public schools are the foundation of the future of American society. Everyone wants America to have good schools so that students are well-educated. So it follows that educational policy must be formulated to meet this goal. However, currently there are many disparities between schools that keep students from being educated equally. One of the causes of these disparities is inequity in school resources between individual schools. One study agrees, saying that disparities in spending have consequences in the subject areas of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and citizenship. In Minnesota, disparities in educational resources have led to a large achievernent gap between white and minority students. In fact, the achievement gap in Minnesota is the fifth largest in the country. Moreover, with 43 percent of Minnesota's budget invested in education, much more needs to be done in order to close Minnesota's achievement gap and to make sure the money spent on education is making a difference. Therefore, student achievement in Minnesota needs to be studied in order to determine which students perform poorly. Furthermore, in order to create educational policy to help these students perform better, the variables that impact achievement must be studied. The purpose ofthis study is to analyze these variables and their role in achievement. Using Ordinary Least Squares, this study will investigate how educational inputs (class size, per pupil expenditure, teacher experience, teacher education, and teacher salary), student characteristics (race, gender, and socioeconomic status), and school characteristics (rural, urban, and suburban schools) impact students' achievement in Minnesota schools. This study includes a review of the literature written on this topic, the empirical results from this analysis, conclusions and implications of this study, and directions for fufther research.

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