From the bookshelf: Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses, by Eric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth

Last updated on: February 24, 2015 at 9:42 pm by Jane the Actuary

From the bookshelf: Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses, by Eric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth 2015-02-24T21:42:24-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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For the time being, this post is more of a placeholder, until I summarize the book more fully. But this is a rare book that I actually own, having bought it off Amazon after reading a reference to it somewhere. It was published in 2009, but the data is still relevant.

You’ve read various charts on how much the U.S. spends on education (e.g., Megan McArdle’s post the other day), comparing this to other countries, which spend as much or more, to refute the premise that the solution to poor school performance is simply to spend more, more, more — on reduced class sizes, on higher teacher salaries, on more technology in the classroom, on newer buildings, etc. McArdle even includes a graphic which shows that the much-vaunted Finnish system spends less, per student, PPP-adjusted, than the U.S. does.

(Hmm. . . seems to me I wrote about this before. Oh, yeah — here it is: “On Government Healthcare Spending — and Education.” But I only provided a table — plus link to the OECD — and a snippet of comment.)

Anyway, this book is exceptional for, in a very data-heavy way, focusing on court decisions that required certain cities and states to massively fund their schools, based on very aggressive readings of state constitution, such as the “Abbott” case, and another in Wyoming and in Kansas City. What was the outcome? Nada. Zilch. The mind-blowing sums of money did not have an impact.

Anyway — I’ll try later to quantify this assertion based on the data in this book. But it’s pretty important stuff, whenever anyone says “we don’t spend enough.”

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