The American Legislative Exchange Council offers its 2006 report card about the status of education, specifically schooling. The report strengthens the growing consensus that simply spending more taxpayer dollars on education is not enough to improve student achievement. They argue for a free market in education and for emphasis on student achievement, not on inputs to schools. For example, New York City Schools spend over $13,500 per student per year to yield lower than average student achievement. ALEC offers downloads of their full report.
Some of us don’t like this, but one of the tables in the ALEC report illustrates that teacher salary does not correlate positively with student achievement. Nor does smaller class size mean higher student achievement scores over time. Hmmm.