Putting Money into Education

Increasing the budget for public schools would improve the quality of basic education. Is this statement correct and true? The answer is "yes" only if the funds are used to provide the necessary resources for learning. For instance, there is no point in building classrooms in places where these are not needed. Classrooms must be built where schools are badly congested that multiple shifts are already employed. Multiple shifts place a severe restraint on any school. Morning and afternoon shifts do not provide enough flexibility and space for extended instructional hours as well as breaks. Anothe example, textbooks must be provided since learning does not only occur inside the classroom. In fact, a lot of times, learning occurs outside the classroom during peer discussions. Most importantly, teachers must be given adequate pay so that they can concentrate and focus on their work. If the basic needs of a learning environment are not met then the quality of schooling is severely compromised.

Of course, there is data that show that greater spending may lead to higher quality in education. WalletHub recently ranked public school systems in the United States using the following criteria:

Methodology

As back-to-school season arrives, WalletHub compared the school systems among the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We used 12 key metrics, including student-teacher ratios, dropout rates, test scores and bullying incident rates to assess the quality of education in each state. By highlighting the best school systems, families relocating in the near future can use the available information to compare schools for their children.

The corresponding weights we used are shown below. The two categories under which the metrics are listed were used for organizational purposes only and did not factor in to our overall rankings. 

School System Rank 

• Presence of Public Schools from one State in Top 700 Best US Schools: 1
• Remote Learning Opportunities from Online Public Schools: 1
• Dropout Rates: 1
• % of Children Who Repeated One or More Grades: 1
• Bookworms Rank: 0.5
• Pupil/Teacher Ratio: 1
• Math Test Scores: 1
• Reading Test Scores: 1

Education Output & Safety 

• Safest Schools (Percentage of Public School Students in Grades 9–12 who Reported being Threatened or Injured with a Weapon on School Property): 1
• Bullying Incidents Rate: 1
• Percentage of People (25+) with Bachelor’s Degree or Higher: 0.5
• Champlain University High School Financial Literacy Grade: 1

Sources: Data used to create these rankings is courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Educational Statistics, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Education Association, the Kids Count - Anney E. Casey Foundation, the Center for Financial Literacy - Champlain College, Stopbullying.gov, U.S. News & World Report and K12.com.

Following the above methodology, the ranking is as follows:

Overall Rank	State	School System Quality Rank	Education Output & Safety Rank
1	New Jersey	1	2
2	Massachusetts	2	12
3	Vermont	3	11
4	New Hampshire	4	15
5	Kansas	8	3
6	Colorado	13	1
7	Virginia	10	4
8	Minnesota	6	31
9	Wisconsin	7	20
10	Pennsylvania	5	43
11	Iowa	9	19
12	Texas	24	5
13	Connecticut	11	38
14	Maryland	16	27
15	Washington	14	50
16	Ohio	21	15
T-17	Illinois	20	24
T-17	Maine	12	42
19	Missouri	22	13
20	New York	27	7
21	Utah	28	8
22	Indiana	19	33
23	Nebraska	17	34
24	South Dakota	25	18
25	Wyoming	15	45
26	North Dakota	18	47
27	Idaho	26	34
28	Tennessee	32	6
29	Florida	29	22
30	Montana	23	48
31	Rhode Island	31	29
32	Georgia	35	13
33	Oregon	30	41
34	Delaware	37	21
35	Hawaii	36	25
36	Oklahoma	43	9
37	North Carolina	38	17
38	Alaska	42	23
39	California	33	51
40	Michigan	34	44
41	Kentucky	40	39
42	South Carolina	44	28
43	Arizona	41	37
44	Arkansas	39	49
45	West Virginia	45	26
46	New Mexico	46	10
47	Nevada	47	36
48	Louisiana	49	40
49	Alabama	48	46
50	Mississippi	51	30
51	District of Columbia	50	31

Combining the above with information on how much a state spends on public school education WalletHub produces the following graph:

Above figure copied from WalletHub

The states represented by green circles in the above figure spend more and have better school systems while those shown in red spend less and have under performing schools. Of course, not everything is green or blue, some are grey. One group of grey states spends a lot, but do not have a strong school system. From the above, these are Arkansas, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Delaware, Michigan, Hawaii, District of Columbia, West Virginia, and New Mexico. Perhaps these states are facing problems in education that are beyond merely providing resources. And there are states that in spite of relatively low spending on education still manage to produce very good school systems: Virginia, Ohio, Washington, Missouri, Maine, Nebraska, Texas, and Utah. These states may well be the smart spenders. All in all, there are 17 states (out of 51 (since this list includes DC)) that are neither red nor green, but 34 states do follow the correlation between spending and quality in basic education.