The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management has a section at the end called “Point/Counterpoint” where two people present different sides of an open question in the field. In the most recent edition, the subject of the Point/Counterpoint was school spending.
Scioto Analysis is currently conducting a cost-benefit analysis on school spending in Ohio, so this is a great place to explore the strengths and weaknesses of our approach. So, let’s go over some of the key points the researchers make.
Before going over both sides, it’s important to understand exactly what is at the heart of this debate. Neither side believes that school spending is unrelated to student achievement, instead the question is whether we can use spending broadly as a predictive variable. In other words, we are trying to figure out how much per-student spending alone can tell us.
To illustrate this, let us begin by looking at the negative side.
Counterpoint
This section written by Josh McGee from the University of Arkansas is titled “Yes, money matters, but the details can make all the difference.” The thesis of this argument is that knowing the school spending amount alone is not enough, we need to have an idea of what these additional resources actually are.
From an intuitive standpoint, this claim makes a lot of sense. Not all spending is worth the same amount and there can be a lot of value in finding the best way to spend additional resources.
For policy analysis, this would suggest that using school spending alone as an input into a model would not be enough to accurately estimate what the impact of a proposal would be. We'd need to know more about what that money would actually be going towards.
One final point McGee makes is that school spending might be extremely context dependent. It might not make sense to use the results of increasing school spending in one context to inform policy somewhere else.
Point
The argument supporting the use of school spending as a predictor of student achievement written by C. Kirabo Jackson from Northwestern University and Claudia Persico from American University is fairly straightforward: so far, the data suggest that there is a causal connection between spending and achievement.
A recent meta-analysis of the literature about the impact of school spending found that there is a positive relationship between overall per student spending and test scores. This trend has been consistent over time and across multiple contexts.
If we assume this is true, then indeed we could use generic school spending as an input into some model. More information about exactly how this spending would be used could certainly be helpful still, but overall there is a measurable effect of school spending.
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What does this mean for policy analysts looking to measure the impact of increased school spending? Mostly that there is still some uncertainty about exactly what the value of increased spending exactly is.
It is good that academics challenge these results, and work to see if there is a way we can improve our understanding of this topic. However, I believe that the results showing a direct link between spending and student achievement are strong enough to improve decision making, even if they aren’t perfect. For policymakers and policy analysts, this helps improve the quality of our decision making.