Equity and distribution of resources and performance across elementary and middle schools within large urban school districts: Evidence from New York City

This study examines the distribution of resources and outputs across elementary and middle school students in New York City's public schools. New York City offers an excellent opportunity to examine the issues of equity in large urban districts because it reflects the diversity and financial challenges of other such districts. Building on established equity concepts developed by Berne and Stiefel (1984) and expanded and enhanced by others such as Murray, Evans and Schwab (1998), this study uses univariate measures of dispersion and multivariate regression analyses to assess whether or not the distribution of resources and outputs is horizontally and vertically equitable and offers an equal opportunity for all students. Further, univariate measures are decomposed into between sub-district and within sub-district components to identify the sources of the disparity. This study is the first intradistrict analysis to use successive years of data, to include outcomes and to take into account the structural features of the allocation process. With respect to resources, this study finds disparity in the distribution of per pupil spending and teachers. Elementary schools with greater proportions of poor students and racial/ethnic minority students have lower spending from operating funds, effectively nullifying the supplemental nature of federal entitlement funds. The negative relationship between operating funds and racial/ethnic minority students, however, is neutral when spending on teachers is excluded from the resource measure. In general, schools with more poor, limited English proficient, mobile and racial/ethnic minority students have fewer licensed and experienced teachers. Reading and mathematics performance tends to be significantly lower for these students as well. Change in performance from one year and grade to the next year and grade is in most cases statistically unrelated to these factors, suggesting that it is unlikely that any gap in performance between such students and their non-poor, English proficient and white counterparts will change. Sub-districts play some role in exacerbating inequities through their allocation of resources to schools. This study concludes by proposing a set of equity indicators to be incorporated into accountability systems and policy and public discourse on public education in large urban districts.