School Inputs and Educational Outcomes in North Carolina : Comparison of Static and Dynamic Analyses

The relationship between student achievement and school inputs has long been a subject of academic research. The general conclusion of past research is that school inputs, such as the number of teachers relative to pupils, has little impact on student academic outcomes. This paper provides a fresh look at this issue. Seventeen alternative measures of student performance in North Carolina school districts are related to a wide array of school policy inputs and socioeconomic characteristics of students and their families. Both static and dynamic analyses are performed. The key findings are (1) the school policy inputs significantly related to student achievement vary by the measure of student achievement used, (2) the joint contribution of school policy inputs to student achievement is relatively small, and (3) the results differ between the static and dynamic analyses; in particular, changes in the number of teachers relative to the number of pupils in the district have a much stronger association with student achievement in the dynamic analysis. Key Words: public education, student achievement