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If you think spending more money on America’s schools will lead to greater student achievement, guess again: A new analysis of 12,000-plus school districts shows just the opposite.
Not only does more spending not correlate with better student performance, turns out it coincides with moderately worse performance.
The public-policy watchdog Open the Books looked at payroll growth at 12,531 public-school districts from 2019 to 2023, and compared it to the percentage change in the district rankings on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, the gold standard for measuring reading and math proficiency of fourth and eighth graders.
Guess what: The greater the payroll growth, the more ground districts lost.
The report sums it up: “Schools may hope that increasing their payroll will help their students outperform other states,” but “there is little evidence” to support that; indeed, “the opposite seems to be true.”
In the six states that boosted payrolls the most — by 23% or more — three were among the top five biggest proficiency losers; another was loser No. 6.
Only one, Utah, which raised spending 62%, showed a gain, and it was small (3%).
Vermont’s 74% payroll boost led the nation, yet it slipped 13% in the rankings, the nation’s third-biggest loss.
By contrast, Hawaii kept payroll growth to just 1.5% — yet shot up 14%, the biggest gain of any state.
Don’t blame COVID, by the way: Though students across the nation lost ground, the changes in rankings show gains and losses relative to other states.
New York’s schools, incidentally, provide more evidence that more money doesn’t equal greater achievement :It shells out more per student than any other state, yet its kids’ tests scores are mediocre.
But why would more money lead to worse performance?
Open the Books stresses that its data on payrolls don’t break out teacher pay from that of administrators.
Some studies have shown that higher teacher pay can improve student outcomes, especially if extra money is tied to improved results (e.g., merit pay).
Yet more bucks for administrators, the researchers suspect, offers clues: Spending on non-teaching personnel has soared.
Schools in Maine boosted payrolls 19% but saw the largest drop in NAEP test scores. Why? Well, in Portland, its largest district, the number of six-figure salaries jumped more than four-fold — from 30 to 137, mostly principals and administrators.
Maryland rolled out a 10-year, $30 billion education plan but saw no gains — as much of the money went not to bolstering reading and math instruction but for classes that encourage “fat pride” and eating “without guilt.”
In Baltimore, teachers make up less than half of the schools’ staff; the rest include high-paid administrators with portfolios that arguably worsen learning — like the senior executive director of equity; the director of equity; the director of equity-centered principal development; five other equity specialists and a staff associate for equity.
And “equity” is basically racist mumbo-jumbo; we’d advise seeing if cutting those positions sparks a surge in student outcomes.
Far too many states are seeing tragic slippage in student achievement, and public bureaucracies burning cash on garbage that only gets in the way of better teaching is a likely cause.
Schools need to focus on the basics — and avoid throwing taxpayer dollars down the drain.