A Study of How Individual School Characteristics Affect School Performance

Abstract

According to the Georgia Department of Education, over 20 billion dollars are spent on public education in Georgia every year. Knowing this, it is critical to understand what factors have the largest impact on student performance in order to budget money efficiently. Standardized test scores are used as a measure of student performance and compared to personnel and demographic information to determine the most impactful components. Both simple and multiple regression analyses are utilized to ascertain the relationship between standardized test scores and these variables. The analyses show many metrics that intuitively should be impactful have little to no correlation, and the percentage of students who qualify for the “Directly Certified” program, a poverty alleviation program, is the most significant.