Public EducationAre We Under Spending, Overspending, or Just Misspending?

Public Perceptions of Spending

Source: Education Next

U.S. Spending and Achievement

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics and NAEP Long Term Trend, Age 9

Education Finance Litigation

Source: National Education Access Network

Increase in Average 8th Grade Math Scores of Black Students

in Court Ordered States between 1997 and 2007

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), quoted in Hanushek, Eric A. and Alfred A. Lindseth, "The Effectiveness of Court-Ordered Funding of

Schools", Education Outlook (May 2009), American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Too Many Strings Attached

Expenditure Breakdown

Classroom (51%)

Administration (6%)

Capital Outlay (11%)

Operational (18%)

Support Services (9%)Other (5%)

Fixing the System

We need to stop prescribing spending on the things that do not matter and allow districts to innovate.

We need to align spending with student achievement and see who’s doing it best.

Fixing the System

Education must be reinvigorated from the ground up. We need to experiment & innovate, putting money behind what works.

Ultimately, that means localizing budgets and revolutionizing how we allocate spending so it is tied to actual student outcomes.