| The purpose of this comparative study was to determine if there were differences in the spending patterns of high performing and low performing school districts in Mississippi during the first year after the implementation of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. Subjects were the ten highest accredited and the ten lowest accredited districts in 2002-2003. Data from the Mississippi Department of Education were utilized. A two-tailed independent-measures t test was run to evaluate the mean difference between the two groups' expenditures in 18 finance functions.; Fund disbursement in two of the ten instruction programs which were compared proved to be significantly different for the two groups. These were the gifted program and Title I funding.; Spending patterns in two of the six support programs were also found to be significantly different. A significant difference was found in improvement of instruction expenditures and in the educational media function.; When the total expenditures between the two groups were compared, a significant difference was found; however, no difference was found in excess of revenue.; With no significant difference found in 13 of the 18 functions compared, it is concluded that no significant difference was found at this time, the first year after full implementation of MAEP, in the spending patterns of high performing and low performing schools in Mississippi in the majority of expenditure functions thought to be more closely related to student achievement. |
