Exploring school sequences as a new unit of analysis for intradistrict school finance equity studies

Abstract

This dissertation used student and school-level data to create school assignment sequences at the student level; evaluated the distribution of resources across those sequences; and compared findings from equity analysis conducted across schools within a school district to similar analysis conducted across school sequences. Findings indicate that school sequences matter in the measurement of vertical equity, less so in measures of horizontal equity, and the impact of student racial and economic characteristics is generally less in models that include student sequence types. The general conclusion, then, is that models that do not account for school sequence both overstate and understate by small to moderate amounts the inequitable relationship between race, poverty and school-level resources.