Date of Award
6-27-2025
Date Published
August 2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Public Administration
Advisor(s)
Robert Bifulco
Subject Categories
Public Administration | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This dissertation examines how public–private funding dynamics and accountability policies shape the distribution of educational resources and student achievement in U.S. public schools. Across three empirical essays, I draw on two novel data sources: newly compiled election and nonprofit tax records for the first essay, and unique student- and teacher-level administrative data from Ohio for the second and third essays. Together, these studies identify causal relationships relevant to school finance equity and early-grade accountability policy. The first essay evaluates whether private contributions respond to changes in public school funding by leveraging close outcomes in tax and bond referenda across six U.S. states. Using a regression discontinuity design that accounts for repeated referenda and dynamic treatment effects, I find that districts that narrowly pass a referendum experience increases in public expenditures of $692 one year after passage and $377 two years after passage. These effects are followed one-year later by declines in private contributions of $57 to $64 per pupil, indicating partial but meaningful crowd-out. Effects on private contributions are concentrated in small and high-income districts, suggesting that private giving is most responsive where the benefits of contributing are highest, and the costs are lowest. I also find modest evidence that increased public funds reduce the likelihood of continued nonprofit activity. This study provides the first large-scale causal evidence of crowd-out in K–12 education using direct measures of parent and community contributions to school-supporting nonprofits. The second and third essay examine Ohio’s third-grade retention policy to assess how the threat of retention—rather than retention itself—influence achievement and behavior among a broad set of students. The second essay uses a regression discontinuity designs to estimate differences in learning gains and behavior to find that students exposed to the threat of retention in Grade 3 experience larger learning gains than students who are not under retention threat. Gains in English Language Arts (ELA) are 0.106 SD and detected across years, student groups, and in schools with a limited capacity to target students facing the threat of retention. Gains in math achievement for students facing retention threat are also detected. Once aware of their status, students under retention threat are less likely to be absent from school or involved in a disciplinary incident, and they are more likely to be assigned to literacy interventions than students who have already met the promotion threshold. The third essay demonstrates that effects of retention threat persist to inform later-grade student achievement, behavior, and course-taking. This essay follows the same students through middle school to test whether early gains endure and use mediation analysis to trace the effects of retention threat over time. Achievement effects persist through Grade 8—0.107 SD in ELA and 0.075 SD in math—while attendance remains higher and disciplinary incidents lower. Estimates of the mechanisms reveal that students under threat are subsequently steered into more advanced math courses and taught by higher value-added teachers, pathways that explain a the sustained gains and suggest that early accountability shocks can alter later classroom sorting in productive ways. Modest improvements in later-grade classroom composition and observed participation in remedial coursework are too slight to account for the sustained gains, indicating that observed environmental changes and program participation are unlikely to explain the absence of fade-out.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Souders, Sarah, "Three Essays on Education Finance and Policy: Public–Private Funding Dynamics and Grade 3 Retention Threat Effects" (2025). Dissertations - ALL. 2169.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/2169
