Investing in Public Schools Reduces Crime: Michigan Study
Students who attended better-funded schools were 15 percent less likely to be arrested through age 30, according to University of Michigan researchers.
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A new University of Michigan study has found that increases in public school funding early in children’s lives can reduce adult crime, reports Phys.org.
The study authors tracked two groups of students from kindergarten to adulthood and concluded that students who attended better-funded schools were 15 percent less likely to be arrested through age 30.
“While many policies focus on the crime-deterring effects of additional policing or tougher criminal justice sanctions, our findings highlight that early investments in children’s lives can prevent contact with the adult criminal justice system,” the authors wrote.
“Specifically, our results show that improving public schools can keep children on a path of increased school engagement and completion, thereby lowering their criminal propensity in adulthood.”
A likely reason for the observed reduction in adult arrests is that students in better-funded schools had better academic and behavioral outcomes and higher educational attainment.
Students were also taught by teachers with greater experience and earning higher salaries, were in smaller class sizes, and attended schools with a larger number of administrators such as vice principals. The reductions in adult crime alone generate social savings that exceed the costs to the government of increasing school funding.
“Michigan’s school funding equalization process led to otherwise similar students receiving drastically different funding amounts during elementary school,” the report says. “Some students with ‘luck’ attended elementary school in a school district and year in which the state assigned large increases in spending in order to equalize funds across districts.”
The study authors, E. Jason Baron, Joshua Hyman and Brittany Vasquez, compared the outcomes of the “treated” students with “control” students—those attending schools in districts and years that did not receive large funding increases.
Using data from the Michigan Department of Education, Center for Educational Performance, National Student Clearinghouse and Michigan State Police, the authors tracked two groups of students from kindergarten to adulthood.
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