usmbguest5318
Gold Member
- Thread starter
- #81
I can't be certain that you'll actually read this paper, but I've linked to it in the hope that you will seeing as you've provided zip, zilch and zero credible information in support of your assertion that "American public schools waste more money than they use efficiently." To show the verity of your claim, you'd need minimally to:
- Provide an empirical, repeatable, and sound measurement framework for identifying what "efficient spending" means in the context of American public schools spending the money.
- Specific evidence of the frequency and quantity of wasteful spending.
- Specific evidence of the frequency and quantity of non-wasteful spending.
Public School Funding and Performance
America’s public school systems are frequently criticized as wasteful and inefficient, and the high average SAT scores of some low-spending states are commonly cited as evidence that public schools cannot be improved with more funding. But states’ average SAT scores are largely driven by their participation rates, and correcting for participation, high-spending states do outscore low-spending states. States with high per-pupil spending generally outscore states with low per-pupil spending on the NAEP as well.
Second, how states fund public education makes a difference. When funding is decomposed into federal, state, local property tax and other local (e.g., county) components, the dominant driver of NAEP performance is shown to be local funding. This finding supports the contention that local funding goes hand in hand with local accountability: communities that own and control their own schools tend to demand higher performance from them, and are likely to be more supportive of them in turn. Public school systems that are primarily dependent on state funding generally have lower average NAEP performances.
Third, school system quality, indexed by NAEP performance, is correlated with higher property values generally; therefore all residents in a community benefit from strong schools. The direct positive correlation between school taxes and property values is also proved. This positive correlation between local tax per housing unit and property values suggests that most of America is under-investing in public education.
By all means, feel free to differ with the researcher's finding, but please don't deign to do so on with regard to the gaps the author already noted. If you take exception with the specific methods used to arrive at the finding covered in the scope of the study, great, and if you do, I look forward to seeing your well reasoned and explained thoughts.Second, how states fund public education makes a difference. When funding is decomposed into federal, state, local property tax and other local (e.g., county) components, the dominant driver of NAEP performance is shown to be local funding. This finding supports the contention that local funding goes hand in hand with local accountability: communities that own and control their own schools tend to demand higher performance from them, and are likely to be more supportive of them in turn. Public school systems that are primarily dependent on state funding generally have lower average NAEP performances.
Third, school system quality, indexed by NAEP performance, is correlated with higher property values generally; therefore all residents in a community benefit from strong schools. The direct positive correlation between school taxes and property values is also proved. This positive correlation between local tax per housing unit and property values suggests that most of America is under-investing in public education.
Additional reference
For children from low-income families, increasing per pupil spending yields large improvements in educational attainment, wages, family income, and reductions in the annual incidence of adult poverty. All of these effects are statistically significant and are robust to a rich set of controls for confounding policies and trends. For children from nonpoor families, we find smaller effects of increased school spending on subsequent educational attainment and family income in adulthood. The results make important contributions to the human capital literature and highlight how improved access to school resources can profoundly shape the life outcomes of economically disadvantaged children, and thereby significantly reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
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