Growing up in a rural school district (I lived 20 minutes outside of a town of 1,700 people) I always wished that I didn’t have to spend a half hour on the bus every morning. I knew that I was lucky though because in middle school and high school some students spent well over an hour each way. This meant that if they were athletes they weren’t getting home from practice until 8:00 p.m. or later. I always thought this had to have a huge affect on how they did in school. After all, 2+ hours on a bus seriously cuts into the time they can spend on homework.

As part of a final project for my Educational Equality class I compiled the following statistics that relate transportation costs and student achievement. The data is limited to my home school district, Mariposa County Unified, and a relatively more urban school district, Clovis Unified.

Using publicly available data I compared the relative amounts of Per Pupil Expenditure that each district allocates for student transportation to the performance of students on the SAT and California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). I also compared the dropout rates in each district. The results of that research are described below and are quite interesting. Continue reading →