Volume 5, Number 3 (Summer) 1970
Garms, Walter I., and Mark C. Smith. 1970. "Educational Need and Its Application to State School Finance." Journal of Human Resources 5(3): 304-317.
This article reports the results of an effort to use local school personnel to gather socioeconomic data on students that would be highly predictive of educational achievement, and to use the information so gathered as the basis for a formula that would distribute state school aid to schools on the basis of their educational need.
School secretaries in 45 New York elementary schools, using only written instructions, gathered data for a sample of students on six socioeconomic variables: ethic background, broken homes, welfare, overcrowded housing, student mobility, and parents' education. In a multiple regression, using the school as the unit of analysis, these variables explain 75 percent of the variation in student achievement. Based on the regression equation, the article defines as a unit of educational need the Need Weighted Average Daily Attendance (NWADA) and shows how this unit may be used in a state school-supported formula.
Mr. Garms is Assistant Professor, Teachers College, Columbia University. Mr. Smith is Assistant to the Principal, James Caldwell High School, West Caldwell, New Jersey. The research reported here was supported by a grant from the New York State Educational Conference Board.
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US ISSN 0022-166X