Q. How do I find information on school funding and educational success?

You can start in the library’s Education Studies LibGuide http://libraryguides.berea.edu/content.php?pid=222889&sid=2833112

In the list of databases, if you have not tried Education Research Complete, that is the database you should be using.

You can type terms such as: school funding, test scores, finance, accountability, assessment, standardized testing. Be willing to think of other synonyms and similar words as well. In typing a quick search with “school funding” and “test scores” (without the quotes), I got at least 38 hits for articles.

For statistics, you can start with the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics). http://nces.ed.gov/

There is a lot of material in NCES. I would start in the tab up on top for publications, then go to the Digest of Education Statistics. When you get to the Digest page, pick the 2012 edition. This is basically a compilation of school demographic and attainment data.

The Department of Education website may have some good resources too. http://www.ed.gov/

For example, here is a small report with overview of how the funding works http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html

The U.S. Census Bureau also brings education stats together www.census.gov You can always search their site.

For example, http://blogs.census.gov/2012/06/21/education-funding-where-do-schools-get-their-money-how-do-they-spend-it/


If you want books, BANC (our library catalog) is the place to go. I ran a search on “school finance” and got a few items.

For example:

Main Author: Hochschild, Jennifer L., 1950-

Title: The American dream and the public schools [electronic resource] / Jennifer L. Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick.

________________________________________

Location: E-Books (Berea College only)
Call Number: E-Book

Status: Available
Linked Resources: Connect to resource [opens a new window]


Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 2004, c2003.
Subject(s): Education and state --United States.

Educational equalization --United States.

Public schools --United States.

Electronic books.


The above is an e-book.

Also, off the top of my head, you should be searching under topics such as school reform. Also some of the works of Jonathan Kozol deal with poverty in public schools. The library has Death at an Early Age. You could order his Savage Inequalities on ILL. As with any book, these can be mined for the references as well.