Report merits look in spending debate
STATE politicians say improving Oklahoma’s school system will be a focus next year. If they’re serious, then they should take note of the state education rankings compiled by the libertarian Reason magazine.
For its rankings, Reason primarily compared states based on students’ performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a set of tests given to fourth- and eighth-graders nationwide. Then they ranked states by educational outcomes (“quality”) and how much states spent to achieve those outcomes (“efficacy”).
Unlike some other state education rankings, Reason’s researchers ignored factors such as graduation rates and pre-K enrollment, which they argue “do not measure K–12 student performance or teaching effectiveness.”
The results reinforce the fact that spending alone does not translate into better outcomes. Reason found Arizona spends about $8,200 per student, adjusted for cost-of-living differences, while Illinois spends more than $15,000. Yet student achievement in Illinois is slightly worse than in Arizona.
At the same time, not all big-spending states fail to educate students. Massachusetts was among the top five states on academic performance and spent more than many states, at a bit under $13,000 per student. Massachusetts is consistently ranked one of the nation’s best school systems, and Reason ranked it the nation’s second-best state system based on quality. Oklahoma lawmakers should look not just at how much Massachusetts spends, but also the way it spends school dollars and differences in the Massachusetts system outside spending totals. Among other things, Massachusetts has long been a leader in strong academic standards, while Oklahoma’s standards continue to receive low marks in national evaluations.
In Reason’s rankings, Oklahoma spends less per pupil than most states and its student achievement is lower than many states, although our academic performance is still better than at least seven states spending more per pupil.
Following a 19 percent appropriation increase this year, lawmakers say they will continue increasing school spending. But resources are finite, and it’s unrealistic to think Oklahoma can shoot to the top of spending rankings any time soon. Thus, lawmakers should emulate states that achieve the best academic results with the least spending to maximize the benefit of any funding increases.
According to Reason, the state achieving the greatest efficacy in education spending is Florida, which spends slightly less per pupil than Oklahoma, adjusted for cost-of-living differences, yet has outcomes far higher than Oklahoma. In 2011 and 2012, Oklahoma implemented reforms that have proven effective in Florida, including a third-grade reading law that required retention of students who were two years below grade level, and an A-F school grading system. Lawmakers have since watered down some of those reforms. Instead of backing off, Reason’s education rankings indicate Oklahoma lawmakers should double down.
The last thing Oklahomans should want is to become Rhode Island, where officials spend about $4,000 more per student than Oklahoma but academic results are almost identical. In education, success should be measured first and foremost in results.