<i>An Exchange: Part I</i>: Does Money Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School Inputs on Student Outcomes

TLDR

Research on educational production functions models how resource inputs affect school outcomes, but recent reviews have found no systematic relation when controlling for student characteristics, and the vote‑counting inference method used is problematic. This study reanalyzes data from earlier reviews with more sophisticated synthesis methods. The authors apply advanced synthesis techniques to the existing review data instead of vote counting. The reanalysis reveals systematic positive relations between resource inputs and school outcomes, with a median regression coefficient large enough to be practically important, though data limitations warrant caution for policy use.

Abstract

Research on educational production functions attempts to model the relation between resource inputs and school outcomes such as educational achievement. Over the last decade a series of influential reviews of this literature have suggested that there is no systematic relation between resource inputs and school outcomes when controlling for student characteristics such as socioeconomic status. The inference procedure used in these reviews, vote counting, is known to be problematic. This study is a reanalysis of data from these earlier reviews, using more sophisticated synthesis methods. It shows systematic positive relations between resource inputs and school outcomes. Moreover, analyses of the magnitude of these relations suggest that the median relation (regression coefficient) is large enough to be of practical importance.While this reanalysis suggests that previous data do not support the conclusions that Hanushek and others derived from it, limitations of their data set warrant caution in using it for policy formation.