This is the second part in a series I’ve been writing this week about the report, How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, which is an analysis of the world’s school systems to find out why some schools succeed and others do not.
Today, my focus is on the section of the report that analyzes education spending. Contrary to popular opinion, increased education spending does not lead to improved student outcomes. This holds true for the U.S. as well as for other nations. In the U.S., public spending per student increased by 73 percent—after allowing for inflation—between 1980 and 2005. However, student outcomes remained roughly the same.
The graph below shows increased U.S. education spending between 1970 and 2003 with stagnant student outcomes in reading and math:
Becoming one of the world’s top-performing school systems does not require lots of spending. For example, Singapore has managed to become a top performer even though it spends less on primary education than do 90 percent of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.