Oil Millions Didn't Make Jethro Smart
By Goldwater Institute: Matthew Ladner (09/25/06)
Will Wyoming’s tax windfall translate into better test scores? - Wyoming’s state coffers have been filled by the booming natural gas market. Last year the state had a $1.8 billion surplus. The state government has poured much of this windfall into its public k-12 education system.
Jim McBride, the state's superintendent of public instruction, has offered some rather startling predictions saying, “We probably will have the nation's No. 1 graduation rate, maybe college attendance rate. We probably will have the highest NAEP scores.”
The academic literature on the relationship between educational inputs (money) and outputs (test scores, graduation rates, etc.), however, leads to a much more sober conclusion. Wyoming’s windfall likely will do next to nothing to improve student achievement.
Wyoming’s real spending per pupil almost quadrupled before the gas windfall and was already among the highest in the nation. But Wyoming doesn’t score much better on the NAEP than Utah, despite spending almost twice as much per pupil. Jethro Bodine of Beverly Hillbillies fame, flush with petrodollars, often predicted he would be either a movie star or a brain surgeon. That never worked out either.
Arizona lawmakers have also been flush with cash as of late. Given the decades long record of spending more without improving learning, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that we need to focus on getting more bang for the buck, not more bucks.
Matthew Ladner is vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute.
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php?/1128.html
(Printer friendly version) Email: Goldwater Institute: