Education Funding and Student Outcomes: A Conceptual Framework for Measurement of the Alignment of State Education Finance and Academic Accountability Policies

Abstract

The conceptualization and measurement of education finance equity and adequacy has engaged researchers for more than three decades. At the same time, calls for increased academic accountability and higher student achievement in K-12 public education have reached new levels at both the national and state levels. Aligning these represents an emerging area of research with many challenges. For example, recent efforts by the authors to measure the alignment of fiscal equity and student outcomes using an equity ratio faced challenges, particularly because traditional education finance statistical measures do not fully account for factors that either impeded or contributed to their alignment. 1 Hence, the purpose of this article is to expand upon our previous work not only by identifying contributing factors, but also by proposing a conceptual framework that explains their role in measurement and alignment of state education finance and academic accountability policies. In this article, we first review the process we used to create an equity ratio used to measure alignment. We then turn to our subsequent and related research to identify relevant contextual factors. Based upon these studies, we propose a conceptual framework that illustrates the interrelationship of factors associated with the alignment of education finance and accountability policies. Refining and Testing the Equity Ratio In 2013, we proposed an equity ratio to measure the alignment of education finance systems with measures of student performance described in accountability policies for the states of Kentucky, Massachusetts, and New York (Knoeppel and Della Salla 2013a). Our inquiry was guided by the question: Given equitable resources or finance inputs, what is the level of equity in educational outcomes? Rather than relying upon measures such as achievement gaps and student performance trend data, we suggested that a statistic that included the use of measures of distribution and dispersion of student performance outcomes was more appropriate. We proposed a three-step process to calculate an equity ratio that involved the measurement of finance inputs