State education rankings are riddled with methodological flaws
There is no reason given to why they take per-student expense out of the picture, other than &#x27;we just don&#x27;t think it should count&#x27;. And that seems to be the entire basis of their finding that rankings are riddled with flaws.<p>There is much research (once you sort through the partisan fluff from research institutions with obvious bias) that supports the positive impact of revenue per student on academic achievement on standardized tests. It&#x27;s actually funny this article popped up, I legit just read a paper from 2015 called &quot;A Cost-Benefit Analysis for Per-Student Expenditures and Academic Achievement&quot;. I genuinely read that this morning. Weird. The authors found that &quot;There was a significant correlation between revenues available per student and ACT scores as one outcome measure of achievement.&quot; And just to drive that point home, they replicated the findings from a 2002 study, further solidifying that sentiment.<p>And that&#x27;s just the most recent one I&#x27;ve read. I&#x27;m sure there are more recent. And that is definitely just one in the series of research related to per-pupil expenditures.<p>Also, I&#x27;m afraid this piece serves no purpose other than to be self-congratulatory to the &#x27;lower taxes at all costs&#x27; group and right-to-work proponents. Why I say this: research pieces probably shouldn&#x27;t include snide comments like<p>&quot;high-tax, high-spending progressive utopias.&quot;<p>&quot;punishing taxes&quot;<p>Maybe that&#x27;s just me? Am I off base?<p>edit: also, the comment section on that article is awful. Just awful.