This is a research project that allows you to look at 40 years of state by state spending against Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) performance. Money can’t buy you love or a good educational system.
In this study the SAT scores are graphed raw and normed for socio-economics and participation, and start at 1972 after the “adjustments” made to the SAT for reasons of a less literate group of SAT candidates. I took the SAT in 1963, when students were smarter, as I recall, on a constant scale, 1964 was the top performing year for SAT, but there always a problem with SAT and ACT and other voluntary exams–the less scholarly don’t take them.
However, you do what you can. This research is very helpful in analyzing whether more spending is producing better student performance.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/state-education-trends?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=e085e2233b-Cato+E-Update%2C+Jan+21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-e085e2233b-141388857&mc_cid=e085e2233b&mc_eid=72b5b30ca3
The big reason teachers’ unions are against standardized testing is because it’s designed to judge the teachers not the students. Standardized tests were never meant to be part of the student’s grade. They allow us to judge whether the school itself is working. Regardless of their shortcomings, standardized tests are the last vestige of competition amongst schools. The union teachers hate that their work can be objectively judged, especially when homeschoolers and private schools consistently outperform them.
Well see, the whole problem is the testing.
Holding students to a standard and judging education by outcomes is just wrong (oh, and racist too).
I mean, the reason we started the whole thing was to (supposedly) teach people the basics they would need to be useful members of society.
Just because larger numbers of high school grads are failures with no skills and a remarkable lack of learning ability doesn’t mean we need to fix anything.(sarc)
Spending more money can help if spent honestly and intelligently. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. A few examples (this could go on endlessly):
1. Paying a bad teacher twice as much as he/she made a few years earlier does not turn him/her into a good teacher. You just have a bad teacher who costs you more and who will retire at a much larger pension.
2. Use it or lose it and federal funding – the feds or a state gives a community $XXX million to build a new school, rather than using the same money to improve, operate, supply and staff the old school for many years.
Impossible to turn down money so you take and use it for something you don’t need or want – while the rest of the system is underfunded.
3. Changing curricula every few years to follow the current trend – looks good on someone’s resume but does nothing for students or teachers.
4. Replacing books every few years for incredible sums of money – school purchasing agents get trips to Vegas and Orlando, while book sellers get wealthy.
None of the above helps students but plenty of $ are spent.