The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between distribution of teacher resources and student need. The effort was to determine if the "best" teachers are teaching the "neediest" students in the elementary schools in the "Big 8" urban school districts in Ohio as equity principles would mandate. Using Pearson correlation analysis, we investigated the relationship between average teacher salary (used to measure teacher quality) and percent of disadvantaged students as well as level of student achievement (both measures of student need) for all public elementary schools in each of the eight districts. In general, the findings show that as the percent of disadvantaged students increased, average teacher salary decreased for the statistically significant relationships. Furthermore, as student achievement increased, average teacher salary increased. Both sets of findings suggest that the "best" teachers are not teaching the "neediest" students.
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Ohio Department of Education (ODE). (2007b). 2005-06 Ohio School District Rating Definitions. Retrieved January 20, 2008, from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=1266&ContentID=13571&Content=31774
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Ouchi, W., telephone interview April 24, 2007.
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Public Impact & The University of Dayton. ( 2008, March). Fund the child: Bringing equity, autonomy, and portability to Ohio school finance. Washington, DC: The Fordham Institute. Retrieved June 2, 2008, from http://www.100percentsolution.org/doc/fund_the_child_ohio_031208.pdf
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Roza, M., & Hill, P. ( 2004). How within-district spending inequities help some schools to fail. Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 201-227.
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Rubenstein, R. ( 1998). Resource equity in the Chicago Public Schools: A school-level approach. Journal of Education Finance, 23, 468-489.
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San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 441 U.S. 1 (1973).
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Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584, 96 Cal. Rptr. 601, 487 P.2d 1241 (1971).
24.
Small Schools II (1995), 894 s.W.2d, 734.
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Stiefel, L., Rubenstein, R., & Berne, R. ( 1998). Intra-district equity in four large cities: Data, methods and results. Journal of Education Finance, 23, 447-467.
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The Education Trust. (Spring 2000). Thinking K-16, 4. Retrieved April 20, 2008, from http://www.2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/E0A47827-6FA9-4BAD-A157-60ABB852F51A/0/k16_spring2000.pdf
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The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. (2006, March). Fund the child: Tackling inequity & antiquity in school finance. Washington, DC: Author .
