New Michigan Study Does More Money Equal Better Academic Success?
Have you ever wondered if there is a direct correlation between how much money a Michigan school is given per student and the students academic outcome?
Well if you have you are in luck.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs have just published a new "empirical" study attempting to answer your question.
They found that "there is no statistically significant correlation between how much money Michigan’s public schools spend and how well students perform academically".
They did quite an exhaustive study. The data they reviewed came from more than 4,000 individual public schools in Michigan and covered "seven years’ worth of detailed expenditures and test scores for elementary, middle and high school students".
The data they reviewed was test scores from 2007 through 2013. As they stated in their article introducing there study they used "school-level data, as opposed to district-level data, enabled a more precise examination of the relationship between spending and performance".
I interviewed the Mackinac Center Education Policy Director Ben DeGrow on my show today and he pointed to a quote in his article stating
“Of the 28 measurements of academic achievement studied, we find only one category showed a statistically significant correlation between spending and achievement, and the gains were nominal at best, spending may matter in some cases, but given the way public schools currently spend their resources, it is highly unlikely that merely increasing funding will generate any meaningful boost to student achievement.”
They came up with the factual data that really just confirms what many intelligent thinking people knew. Money does not always solve every problem as many who believe in the the left's ideologue thinks.
Yes children should not be going to rat infested schools we can all agree with that, but do these children need some of these palaces that are being built. Also are we to believe what the Michigan Education Association tells us that teachers who are not paid a lot of money will not teach their students as well. I refuse to believe that.
It comes down to the teachers, administration and parents all being involved and working together to try to attain the best outcome for their children.
It is time to scrap the entire system and start from scratch.
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