I think it’s possible that this ends up simultaneously helping Philly overall, but also increasing the disparities in outcomes within Philly.

If you look at a place like DC, they spend a lot per student, I think $30k, but still have terrible outcomes. And thats because poverty, community violence, parents with low educational attainment, etc. create huge issues.

Money can help, but only so much.

But, for the parts of the city that don’t have those issues, that extra money could make those schools more comparable to ones in the burbs, or some private schools.

If that makes some of the educationally focused parents who currently flee to the burbs or send their kids to private school more willing to send their kids to Philly public schools, you could see some of those non-low-income neighborhood schools achieve outcomes that become more on par with the better suburban schools.

That is, schools can have issues because of the school itself, or because it’s reflecting the underlying issues of the household and community it serves.

So, in the parts of the city where the issue is less the households & community, and instead the school itself, the money will help more than where the issues are more about the community and households since those problems are too massive for schools to fix, even with more funding.

It’ll still help!

Everywhere will get better, but not at the same rate, so the gap between them may actually get wider, not narrower.

Or, like, if they can get scores up 10% across the board, then schools scoring a 25 could go up to 27.5, and the ones scoring 65 could go up to 71.5

Both improve, but the gap increase from 40 to 44.

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s kind of my gut feeling.

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out and will make for a nice little natural experiment for some future researcher to study the effects of school funding on outcomes.