Is there any correlation at all between increased school funding and better educational outcomes? For instance, Utah spends $5k per student per year while Baltimore spends $25k per student per year. Utahan children have higher graduation rates, better GPAs, and better standardized test scores. It's the same across the US from NYC to LA.

I'm growing more and more skeptical that throwing more and more money into the furnace that is the US education system is suddenly going to produce better outcomes. How much more must Baltimore spend? $30k a student? $50k a student? $100k a student? Where's the magic number?

According to [1] Utah spends $10,510 per student per year and according to [2] Baltimore spends $16,184. Where did you get your figures?

[1] https://auditor.utah.gov/audit_reports/public-education/

[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/school-s...

I got it from the Annual Survey of School System Finances, U.S. Census Bureau, though on checking it again it's between $6,000 and $7,000 (I was recalling from memory). So not what I put in my comment exactly, but doesn't change my main point in any way.

It could be four things:

  - Comparing two statistical flukes.
  - Socio-economic factor: Utah has better wealth distribution.
  - Socio-economic factor: Utah has affordable housing and Baltimore so the effective wealth gap is lower.
  - Baltimore has other issues.

That’s the most facile thing I’ve ever read. Did it control for cost of living? Did it control for demographics?

In 2019, and I’m using this because you can explore it at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/states/groups?... , Mississippi’s 8th grade math mean score was the same as New Hampshire’s, when comparing white students. Mississippi is just way less white than New Hampshire. California, also near the bottom overall, has better white performance than New Hampshire, but not as good as Massachusetts, which has always had a lot of smart people moving to Boston.

The ranking there is simply a diversity/brain drain ranking. Mississippi and California are way more diverse, so they rank low. States with nothing to attract or keep smart parents, like West Virginia, rank low too.

Yes, the whole puzzle becomes much simpler to think about when you consider the possibility that the school scores primarily reflect the quality of students admitted, and not the quality of the education administered.

I note that koolba's comment was evidence-lite and really rather partisan. So it is probably incorrect.

However, claiming the reverse is true is also evidence-lite. That paper looks like it was a fairly cursory piece of work and didn't account for population size or characteristics (eg, number of disadvantaged students) in the correlation work.

I suspect what it really shows is that political affiliation isn't the biggest driver of outcomes. Looking at the table at the end of the paper and thinking about population, I suspect the aim would be more of what Massachusetts does and less of what California does (both Democrat states) if possible.