More Spending, Better Results?
Anyone who’s spent time in a struggling school knows that there are lots of things that could be done with more money: adding teachers, fixing decrepit buildings, offering more sports and activities, upgrading books, and so on.
Presumably, doing those things would improve student performance. This is the reasonable view made by those who lean left. Less reasonably, it’s also the emphatic view of the teachers unions and the politicians (mostly Democrats) who depend on their support.
Yet the relationship between spending and student achievement is surprisingly tenuous. True, in one famous randomized experiment (yes, children were treated like laboratory rats), students assigned to smaller classes did better than students assigned to larger classes. Obviously, money is what makes smaller classes possible.
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CDOBS Editor says:
Reasoned proposal from Chicagoan Charlie Wheelan as to education reform featuring more money and more choice.
Wheelan skips the obvious reforms of cutting administrative positions and ending earlier retirement programs. In doing so, he is able to extend the conversation to actual systemic changes.
Wheelan also skips the simple fact that Private Schools in Chicago do better than Public Schools by leap and bounds, not just incrementally via school choice programs that generally bypass government mandate, whereas schools subject to mandate (charter schools etc) are only incrementally better than public schools.
Needs further investigation (by the Chicago Daily Observer), but great to see a serious discussion of a serious issue.