Regional Wealth Disparity and Its Impact on Urban and Rural Child Schooling in Developing Economies: A Case of Punjab (Pakistan)

Objective: The purpose of this study is to check how regional wealth disparity affects urban and rural schooling in Punjab. It is an effort to explore the influence of wealth disparity between the districts of Punjab on school enrolment of children 3-4 and 5-9 years age group using micro data-sets of cluster survey in 2007-08, 2011 and 2014 in Pakistan. Methodology: This study uses the probit model and the principal component analysis to check district wealth disparity in Punjab, Pakistan. Findings: The principal variable i.e., socioeconomic disparity influences the school attendance severely in Punjab, however it affects more the rural areas. Practical Implications: The sliding down the disparity desires equivalent distribution of funds from government of Punjab to the districts. The policy objective is to highlight the development of the districts of Punjab. Originality: This study creates the district wealth disparity index with various formula and principal component analysis to check how regional wealth disparities affect schooling.

Disentangling the Roles of Institutional and Individual Poverty in the Identification of Gifted Students

Although the relationships between family income and student identification for gifted programming are well documented, less is known about how school and district wealth are related to student identification. To examine the effects of institutional and individual poverty on student identification, we conducted a series of three-level regression models. Students of poverty are generally less likely to be identified for gifted services, even after controlling for prior math and reading achievement. Furthermore, school poverty predicts the percentage of gifted students identified in a school. Within districts, even after controlling for reading and math scores, the poorer schools in a district have lower identification rates. Whereas students of poverty are generally less likely to be identified for gifted services, poor students in poor schools are even less likely to be identified as gifted.

Superintendent Recruitment: Effects of School Councils, Job Status, Signing Bonus, and District Wealth

This study examined the effects of four variables on job ratings provided by applicants for simulated superintendent vacancies. The participants were superintendents ( n = 72) and superintendent-certified personnel ( n = 72) reacting to jobs described in simulated position announcements. The participants rated jobs in districts without school councils higher than jobs in districts with school councils. Superintendents rated jobs in districts without school councils higher than did superintendent-certified personnel. Superintendents rated jobs in high-wealth districts with signing bonuses higher than jobs in a high-wealth district with no signing bonus. Implications for recruitment practice and future research are discussed.

Services in a Rural High Wealth and Low Wealth School District

Using a comparative analysis of two rural school districts with similar demographic profiles in Mississippi, the impact on special education programming of disparate school district wealth was studied. The study revealed that the wealthy school district had far greater local revenues supporting special education that was not offset by either state or federal dollars. This revenue difference was most obvious in differences in the quality of special education personnel, with the wealthier district employing teachers with higher academic degrees and with more teaching experience. Implications for resource equalization are also discussed.