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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Does it even matter? Every bit of information I've looked at in terms of spending vs. academic achievement shows basically no correlation, and sometimes a very weak inverse correlation. Utah, Colorado, and Iowa spend close to the lowest amount per student on education, but consistently rank in the top 10 for academic achievement. Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement. Arguments about disparate spend amounts based on property taxes beg the question.

Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement.

Differences in education funding are overwhelmingly because of teacher salaries. Teachers in poor midwestern states with some of the lowest per-capita spend might be paid like $40k, whereas an identical teacher in the NYC public school system might be paid $100k. The very highest-paid public school teachers are invariably found in rich suburbs (Greenwich, Palo Alto/SV in general, Westchester, and affluent New England in general). In part this is because teachers don't want a 90 minute commute and do want to be able to afford a home. There are also some outliers in places where it's hard to recruit teachers, like Alaska.

Education spend therefore definitionally has pretty much zero effect on outcomes, because there's no magical means by which cost-of-living based salary differentials for teachers impact student results, or even educational quality in any sense. The NYC teacher isn't rich, adjusted for cost of living they live similarly to their Iowa equivalent, they just live in a more expensive place.

I think states are large enough as units they might not be helpful, especially since spending is going to differ based on how wealthy the states are; though I glanced through state level stuff just now and found correlations between higher spending and better results, here's California and Texas. The EPI piece at least is based off the Department of Education's National Education Cost Model, which estimates dollars per pupil necessary to reach adequate test scores. I don't really grok the model but the estimated numbers aren't much higher than what's actually spent so aren't calling for radical overhaul or anything.

Sure, and the catholic school system spends like 30% of the public school system on average and gets better results than anyone.

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