The Relationship of the Texas School Foundation Program Equity to Student Performance and Socioeconomic Status

The economic downturn experienced throughout the United States, state structural budget deficits, higher student achievement standards, and overall political turmoil in our nation has magnified the focus on public education. In fact, public education funding and student achievement have become a political pawn between liberal and conservative groups. Both groups argue the validity of the relationship between per student funding and academic results. Research indicates some degree of relationship between per student funding and academic results as well as some degree of relationship between student socioeconomic status (SES) and academic results. This study measured the level of fairness of financial resources available to school districts in the state of Texas (e.g., Senate Bill 1 from the 81st Texas legislature) by examining the per student resources available to all Texas public schools during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 academic years. The fairness of allocations was determined using industry standard horizontal equity formulas, the Gini coefficient, the McLoone index, and the Verstegen index. Vertical equity was assessed through a simple regression to better understand the relationship between the greater of district target revenue or revenue at the compressed rate and district levels of poverty. The study concluded that overall target revenue lacks horizontal equity, and Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) does not improve system equity. In addition, there was no vertical equity within the target revenue system. This study also measured the significance of the correlation between district SES, student academic achievement, and available per student financial resources using multiple regression. The researcher used data from the 2011-12 academic year, which included the Adequate Yearly Progress bridged Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) scores for English and math from standardized testing in 2012. The results indicated a strong relationship between test scores and SES but little significance in the relationship between test scores and target revenue per student.