Study: No connection between spending, student outcomes

By Rob Nikolewski April 7, 2014

For decades, it’s probably the most troublesome question facing education: Why are results for U.S. public school students so mediocre, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars spent  Andrew Coulson thinks he’s got the answer: Because there is no discernible correlation between spending and outcomes.

“The takeaway from this study is that what we’ve done over the past 40 years hasn’t worked,” said Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute. “The average performance change nationwide has declined 3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, there’s been no relationship, effectively, between spending and academic outcomes.”

The CATO Institute is a free-market think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

Coulson just released his study, “State Education Trends: Academic Performance and Spending over the Past 40 Years,” and he points to this chart that incorporates costs and the number of public school employees with student enrollment and test scores:…..To Read More…..

 

My Take - There were a number of comments worth reading, but there were two that actually outlined the substance of the problem:

"I'm a retired teacher of inner city public schools. I knew within the first 3 years of teaching that spending more money would not fix the problems with public education (at least in the inner city setting). This is because the problems are not based in the education system inside the schools. The major issue that must be dealt with is the decline in family values that produces socially uncooperative, unmotivated, disrespectful, and disrupting student populations with absence rates at 20 to 30 percent daily. You can't teach an empty chair and worse you can't teach anything while spending time disciplining. Also programs like "no child left behind", heterogeneous grouping, and mainstreaming have resulted in a "dumbing down" of curricula. These facts are the explanation for why private schools (which have student populations coming from more stable home lives) do better than public schools even though they spend less per student."

Another reader stated:

"I taught in Chicago public schools, and a major part of the problem is the teacher unions. Teacher raises, tenure, benefits always trump what's best for the students. When good teachers get let go because of lack of seniority but bad teachers reap the benefits of years in service, or having a meaningless master's degree--education suffers. Political correctness has also infected the total system. Dumbing down the curriculum is rabid as shown by ACT and SAT scores. Out of 12 History teachers where I taught, 10 were extremely liberal and they brought that ideology to the classroom. Classes were more indoctrination than teaching the students how to think critically or objectively. Finally, the size of the non-classroom staff just sky rocketed, and of course, as a result , kids perform below grade level as a norm. Blame it on the home environment all you want, but that's part of the job not an excuse for bad teachers nor no accountability for lack of success!!! Please don't say it's lack of money---that sum keeps going up, and students still can't read or write coherently."

I would like to make this point.  Even schools where the local population is in termoil things can be done to fix it, primarily reinstalling traditional values and discipline, and society must get behind that.   

There is one thing that has to be understood absolutely.  An abandonment of traditional values at all levels is directly responsible for the breakdown of society at every level.  This didn't happen entirely by accident.  The leftists controlling education, entertainment, the media, the bureaucracies and government may be ignorant of what they're doing, but the 45 goals of the Communist Party to take over America, which was published in the Congressional Record - . Appendix, pp. A34-A35 on January 10, 1963, has almost come to complete fruition.  Destroying education is foundational to that!