– The C.D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to raise living standards by fostering economically sound public policies through research that is nonpartisan, evidence-based and subject to definitive expert review.
CANADA – There is little correlation between fundraising success at schools and student grades, finds a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Unfair Advantage? School Fundraising Capabilities and Student Results,” authors Huijie Guo and David R. Johnson measure the association of funds raised in Toronto District School Board (TDSB) elementary schools with educational outcomes, and conclude that fundraising plays only a minor role in making schools more unequal.
“Passionate discussions are taking place about whether differing fundraising capabilities across public schools have a direct impact on education outcomes, and the prevailing opinion is that they do,” states Johnson.
“However, through comparing funds raised at similar schools – schools similar in the structure of grades taught and similar in terms of the background of their students – we discover that the apparent fundraising disparity diminishes substantially.”
The report compares academic outcomes as measured by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) primary and junior assessments, taking into account school fundraising and controlling for student background.
Results show that moving between two schools with students from similar backgrounds, one with zero funds raised to a school with $300 raised per student per year would predict only a 3.0 to 4.5 percentage point increase in student results.
In 2011-2012, operating spending per student in the TDSB was about $11,000 per student per year, so $300 is, relatively speaking, a tiny amount. It is hard to see how such a small amount of funds could ever substantially change results, particularly when they are generally not spent on additional staff.
According to Johnson, “the very small amounts of money involved, brings into question the strength of any association of funds raised and EQAO results.” This small variation in fundraising efforts may also be an indirect indicator of variation in parental engagement across schools where parents come from similar backgrounds.
Parental background explains about half the variation in student achievement at school yet there remains a great deal of unexplained variation in outcomes beyond the minor influence of school fundraising.
Fundraising is not central to understanding what drives variation in school academic outcomes. As a result, other sources of the variation in school results beyond social and economic background and fundraising should be the focus of policymakers’ investigative efforts.
