Uptick and Notick

Pat Cleary provides some charts from John Stossel's new book that helps prove and argument that I have been making for years; that just because you spend more money on education doesn't mean education is improved:

Here's the chart on spending per pupil in the US. You'll see it has doubled in absolute terms since 1990 and has quadrupled in constant dollars over the last four decades. If you read the popular media, folks are always saying that we need to increase spending in order to improve education, so it would be logical to assume they are related, right?

Wrong.

Here are some scores. You'll see some that show a marginal improvement, but none show improvement commensurate with the increase in spending. Just click on each to follow the link:

4th Grade Reading
4th Grade Math
4th Grade Science

8th Grade Reading
8th Grade Math
8th Grade Science

12th Grade Science

When I stood as a candidate for the Board of Education in 2003, certain convention delegates (particularly active members of the teachers union) looked at me as if I were an alien when I noted that if the amount of money spent on schools correlated with educational success that students in the District of Columbia would have the highest test scores in the nation. I think that many leaders and parents these days get it; you can spend all of the money in the world on schools, but if the curriculum and the structure are not there, and if teachers and administrators are not being held accountable for their performance, you will not get the desired result.

On education, money does not buy happiness, or success. Just ask Bonnie Copeland.