The Cost of an 'Adequate' Education

This Op Ed in today's WSJ raises some good points, but is ultimately a pretty lame rebuttal of the spending myth -- the idea that what ails our failing schools is lack of money.  It fails to make the two most powerful arguments against the spending myth (for more on this, see http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Spendingmyth.pdf):

1) As a nation we're ALREADY spending MORE per student in large urban districts AND the highest cost districts in the country are among the lowest performing (Newark, Trenton, Camden, Washington DC, Hartford, etc.); and

 

2) In cases where huge amounts of money have been poured into failing systems -- Kansas City being the most infamous -- student achievement hasn't budged.

I am NOT arguing that more money isn't needed to fix our schools -- in most cases, it is -- but I AM arguing that pouring money into dysfunctional, broken and corrupt systems isn't going to improve student achievement one bit.  The key, as was the case in two schools in Austin, is marrying more money with genuine reform.

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The Cost of an 'Adequate' Education

By ERIC A. HANUSHEK
October 9, 2006; Page A19

online.wsj.com/article/SB116034747849086192.html

The nation is watching to see what happens with New York City school finance. After a dozen years in the courts, the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York is now back at the Court of Appeals for a final judgment about the added appropriations that the legislature must send to the city. This judgment is, however, unlikely to be the final statement. If the legislature must come up with an incredible sum of money close to the more than $5 billion currently on the table, it may well balk, precipitating a true constitutional crisis.

New York's school-finance case may be the most visible in the nation, but it is certainly not unique. Almost half of the states today have an "adequacy" case in their courts. Only five states have never faced a school-finance case during the past three decades. New York, however, is on center stage this week. Because of the size of the judgment, the New York decision could send shock waves through state legislatures across the country.