Today the Cato Institute released a state by state study comparing the academic performance on the SAT and the state’s education spending.
Long-term trends in academic performance and spending are valuable tools for evaluating past education policies and informing current ones. But such data have been scarce at the state level, where the most important education policy decisions are made. In a new study, Cato scholar Andrew J. Coulson examines state by state SAT score trends reaching back over 40 years along with state education spending over the same period. “In general,” says Coulson, “the findings are not encouraging.”
North Carolina’s performance is flatline, while spending continues to go up over the years. This study again demonstrates how spending and performance is not related.
