New data again shows: More funding does not guarantee better education

when are we going to get reliable school-level financial reports?

One really important point in the never-ending battle over how much education spending is needed is the fact that just throwing more money at public education does not guarantee better performance. And, new data continues to substantiate this fact.

In a recent rant about public education needing more money, a national blog pointed to a new report from the Education Law Center that attempts to add more noise to the “we need more money” wailing. But, one table, Figure 1 in Danielle Farrie’s and David G. Sciarra’s paper, MAKING THE GRADE 2020, HOW FAIR IS SCHOOL FUNDING IN YOUR STATE  did have some interesting information on public school funding for education in each state in 2018. The authors explain that the amounts shown supposedly only include local and state generated funding except for some minor support for impact aid and American Indian supports (intended to replace local revenue). Also omitted was capital outlay and debt service amounts, which can be uneven from year to year. Federal support in general, however, is not included. Also, the amounts were adjusted for wage differences for teachers across the country.

So, this is probably a fairly reasonable comparison of local plus state level education support in each state.

I added to this the Scale Scores for each state from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 8 Math Assessment to produce the following table.

There are a couple of takeaways from this: 

• The fairly low correlation between funding and NAEP scores for all the states (0.39) indicates that there actually isn’t a strong relationship between spending more and getting better education as a consequence, at least not where math is concerned.

  • New York provides a good example that more money does not equal commensurate performance. While ranking in national lead among the states for education revenue, the state placed below the median for NAEP scores.

  • At the other end of the spectrum, Idaho had the third lowest local plus state spending in the nation, but its NAEP performance was 9th best in the nation.

• Kentucky’s state plus local education revenue in 2018 was not nearly last in the nation. In fact, we ranked in 32nd place. However, our NAEP scores ranked somewhat lower in 36th place. So, looking at overall “All Student” scores, at least on a relative basis, we are not getting commensurate bang for the buck.

 By the way, sharp readers might note that some states share equal NAEP Scale Scores. I set the table up so they also shared the same ranking.

I also created a similar table using only white student scores from each state. Only checking white student scores is a bit more apples to apples for comparison purposes across states because the racial makeup of the student body across the states now varies dramatically.

• Using white only scores, the correlation of spending to scores is even lower.

  • Colorado ranks way down in 38th place for funding but was in 7th place for NAEP Grade 8 Math Scores for its white students.

  • This time Maine ranks 8th for per pupil state plus local revenue but its white students only placed a dismal 45th place on NAEP Grade 8 Math in 2019.

  • In the white only score case, Idaho and New York rank equally in a tie for 17th place NAEP scores but Idaho still ranks 48th for funding while New York still ranks in the top slot for funding. There are plenty of differences in these two states, of course, but it is clear that funding alone won’t make education better. New York is spending over 2-1/2 times more than Idaho but doing no better.

• Kentucky ranked a dismal 47th place for its white student NAEP Grade 8 Math Scale Score in 2019 despite funding ranking much higher in 32nd place.

To be completely fair with an analysis like this, I think federal funding also should be considered. However, the kind of breakouts Farrie and Sciarra used to modify the raw state plus local numbers are not available to me at present to do that analysis. But, the point is made fairly well, anyway.

Arguing for more money without a lot more evidence, clearly lacking, that the extra money can and will be used effectively, is not good policy. And, doing so while Kentucky’s education establishment continues to deny us usable and credible school-level financial reports, which we recently discussed here, is even worse policy.

Let’s get some good financial reporting for school-level spending so we can see what gets the best bang for the buck. Then, legislators can talk intelligently about funding. Until we get better financials, making increases in education spending is just like shooting in the dark.