re: #55 Rightwingconspirator

There is a widespread belief that public school systems are wasteful and inefficient, and that an increase in per-student funding will do little or nothing to improve student performance. Every year the College Board releases average SAT scores for college-bound high-school students by
state, and critics of public education regularly point out that some states with low per-pupil spending on schools… deliver consistently higher average SAT scores than high-spending states such as….

The College Board publishes its state average SAT I scores with an emphatic caution: “The College Board strongly discourages the comparison or ranking of states on the basis of SAT I scores alone.” The principal reason for this is that SAT I participation rates vary widely across
states. …high-scoring states typically have much lower test participation rates.

…after accounting for differences in test participation rates, per-pupil spending has a statistically significant positive correlation with mean SAT I scores.

A better measure of state-level academic performance that is not biased by varying participation rates is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a series of standardized tests administered periodically by the US Department of Education to students in both public and
private schools all across the US.

Most NAEP tests are specifically designed to support state-by-state comparisons of academic performance.

Figure 4 shows the positive relationship between funding and student performance. Figure 5 shows that per-pupil funding is positively and sign
ificantly correlated with the state averages for each of the individual NAEP tests as well. The (null) hypothesis that NAEP performance is not
improved by additional per-pupil funding of public schools is clearly rejected.

I’ve taken out the relevant passages. Here’s the original: Public School Funding and Performance.