Does School Quality Affect Childrens Educational Attainment?
The next question is whether these differences in school quality translate into worse outcomes for less privileged children. By the early 1990s, many people were convinced that once one took account of differences in family background, school resources—including money—did not matter for student achievement. In a 1996 article economist Eric Hanushek wrote, “Three decades of intensive research leave a clear picture that school resource variations are not closely related to variations in student outcomes and, by implication, that aggressive spending programs are unlikely to be good investment programs unless coupled with other fundamental reforms.”39 Although Hanushek’s analyses of the effects of school resources on student achievement have been very influential, other researchers have criticized his findings on methodological grounds.40 For example, one independent analysis of one of Hanushek’s studies concludes that the effect of per pupil spending on student achievement is large and ed
