In Education, Money Itself Is Not The Answer

State and Local Government |
By Rik W. Hafer | Read Time 1 minute

Money is not the answer

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s State of the State address correctly identified education as a key policy area this year. This is due to the fact that Missouri’s educational record to date is middling at best. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and his co-authors in a 2012 study compared gains in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores for math, reading, and science across states. Out of the 41 states for which assessment results are available, Missouri ranks 27th.

Gov. Nixon called upon the legislature to increase spending on K-12 education in Missouri by $278 million in 2014. Will spending more money on educating Missouri children push us to the head of the class? The chart above, taken from the Hanushek study, does not support the governor’s claim. As shown by the experience of many states over the past 20 years, spending more money on education does not guarantee marked improvements in student achievement.

The chart above indicates no reliable relationship between spending on education and educational success across states. The correlation is 0.12. In other words, the correlation between spending and student outcomes is essentially zero.

About the Author

Rik Hafer is an associate professor of economics and the Director of the Center for Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.  He was previously a distinguished research professor of economics and finance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. After receiving his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 1979, Rik worked in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis from 1979 to 1989, rising to the position of research officer. He has taught at several institutions, including Saint Louis University, Washington University in Saint Louis, the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam. While at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Rik served as a consultant to the Central Bank of the Philippines, as a research fellow with the Institute of Urban Research, and as a visiting scholar with the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and St. Louis. He has published nearly 100 academic articles and is the author, co-author, or editor of five books on monetary policy and financial markets. He also is the co-author of the textbook Principles of Macroeconomics: The Way We Live. He has written numerous commentaries that have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Business Journal, the Illinois Business Journal, and the St. Louis Beacon. He has appeared on local and national radio and television programs, including CNBCs Power Lunch.

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