| There has been a consistent academic gap between economically disadvantaged children and other children in Texas that may not be as disadvantaged. Schools have had difficulties teaching basic skills, needed for success at higher levels, at the elementary level to this population. The question thus becomes, what does it take to teach and provide basic skills to these students successfully? To be an effective campus, a school does not need to bring all students to identical levels of mastery, but should bring an equal percentage of its highest and lowest social classes to minimum mastery levels (Edmonds, 1982).;The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between finance and staff variables and the academic achievement of students while revealing successful practices for school districts and schools alike. The benefit of such a study is that school districts may wish to use the observations to examine or evaluate their staffing and financial situations.;Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) procedures were performed in the study. The independent variable in each of the questions was the school accountability rating, which consists of multiple groupings and the dependent variable which would be school finance and staff variables. The dependent variables were the various school finance and staff variables.;In this research, 11 questions were addressed and repeated for three academic years. The three years of data were collected from the Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System website. Findings suggested that in more cases then not, significant statistical findings were observed when reviewing the staff and financial data. An important finding was that the Academically Unacceptable school district category on average spent less funding on instruction, had teachers with a lower amount of experience, and had the greatest number of students per teacher when compared to the three other accountability groups. |
