Dramatic Increases in School Spending Have Not Improved Outcomes for Oregon Students:
Students in Oregon saw their reading and math scores decline over a decade when the state’s spending on schools rose by 80%, an analysis by Georgetown University shows.
The data, presented to the state Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means subcommittee on education Jan. 28, showed that increased spending from 2013 to 2023 correlated with lower student performance on the Oregon Statewide Assessment. The increase in spending, education finance researchers concluded, did not correlate with improvements in performance for any student group.
Oregon spends $17,100 per student.
Other states have cracked the code, and Roza’s [Dr. Marguerite Roza, director of the Economics Lab at Georgetown] confident Oregon can, too.
Take Mississippi, she says: Education spending has shot up there about 54% in the past decade, up to $12,500 per student, but the state is laser-focused on outcomes. It reviews data quarterly and mandates its teachers partake in updated training. The state’s fourth graders outpaced the national average in reading and were among the top 10 states on a nationwide assessment, up 10 places from the year before. (Oregon, meanwhile, is in the bottom five.)
I am less optimistic that Oregon will solve the puzzle, though the answers (accountability for parents and students, suspension/expulsion of students who can’t self-regulate, ban of cell phones, higher academic expectations, etc.) seem obvious to everyone but the Democrats in the legislature and the Oregon Department of Education.