Categories: News

Extra Cash Doesn’t Equal Extra Learning

Alfred A. Lindseth and Eric Hanushek argue in Educationnext that court-ordered funding increases to schools has not resulted in correlative increases in student achievement. (They’ve made the same argument in book-length form, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools.) Therefore, a 40-year pattern of state courts mandating school funding increases is shifting to a more hands-off approach, and the authors use N.J.’s Abbott cases as a primary example, along with Kentucky, Kansas, and Wyoming.

Notwithstanding these dramatic spending increases, we found that student performance has languished. The unmistakable picture in each of these states is that during a decade or more of court funding mandates, student performance, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (commonly referred to as the “Nation’s report card”), has not measurably improved relative to other states that did not have anywhere near the same influx of new school money.

Laura Waters

View Comments

Recent Posts

BREAKING: Statement from JerseyCAN on State’s Long-Delayed Release of Student Test Results

This is a statement by Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN, on the New Jersey…

2 years ago

NJEA: Murphy’s Elimination of Teacher Performance Test Is a Major Win for Students and Educators

This is a press release. Earlier today, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to eliminate…

2 years ago

Murphy Signs Bill Eliminating EdTPA Test for Teacher Certification

Today Gov. Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill 896, which prohibits the New Jersey Department of…

2 years ago

LILLEY: Blue States Had More School Closures and More Learning Loss — Just Like NJ under Gov. Murphy

The 74 conducted a study of the relative learning loss in Democratic (Blue) and Republican (Red) states and…

2 years ago

One of Newark Superintendent’s New High Schools Tolerates Racism Against Black Students

In October 2020 Newark Superintendent Roger Leon announced with great fanfare the opening of district’s…

2 years ago