Revisiting Deceitful Claims about School Funding and Outcomes (a thread)

Uncategorized 1 Minute

I’ve had enough. This has to stop. I’ve explained on at least a few occasions that there exists a cottage industry for whom their bread and butter is telling state legislatures and judges that money simply doesn’t matter for schools (Merchants of Doubt): That public schools all have more than enough to do what they need to do and they all just need to do better with what they have – especially those over-funded schools in high poverty settings.

I’ve also explained that the two most disingenuous junk analyses oft used to “display” that money doesn’t matter are various forms of the “long term trend” graph (money went up, outcomes were stagnant or went down, so money can’t matter) and the “clouds of doubt” graphs (with money on the X and outcomes on the Y, there’s no apparent relationship). These bogus assertions and deceitful illustrations should have died a long time ago. Why? because they are bogus and deceitful and because those who now insist on continuing to use them have been informed, over and over again. So they are bogus and INTENTIONALLY deceitful. Period. Full Stop. (and not this author’s first offense by any means)

Dumbest completely fabricated (but still serious?) graph ever! (so far)
On the Real Dangers of Marguerite Roza’s Fake Graph
School Finance through Roza-Tinted Glasses: 5 School Funding Myths from a single Misguided Source

So, here’s a BlueSky thread from a short while back:

The link: https://www.educationnext.org/could-disappointing-2017-naep-scores-due-to-great-recession/

Here are those graphs – for Oregon, because we had to spend a stupid amount of time explaining why the Edunomics analysis was garbage to policymakers in that state:

Link to that report: https://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/does-money-matter-in-education

link to book: https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9781682532423/educational-inequality-and-school-finance/ Full discrediting of “long term trend” AND “clouds of doubt”

Link to paper on how to conduct rigorous analyses of funding and outcomes: https://edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1127

Link to that report – which actually applies rigorous analyses: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/291280

Even TikTokers an see through this flimsy stuff (and I don’t like much of what this guy posts):

Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@nicholasjkurian/video/7476603053466979614

Unknown's avatar

Published by schoolfinance101

Bruce Baker is an Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. From 1997 to 2008 he was a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. He is lead author with Preston Green (Penn State University) and Craig Richards (Teachers College, Columbia University) of Financing Education Systems, a graduate level textbook on school finance policy published by Merrill/Prentice-Hall. Professor Baker has written a multitude of peer reviewed research articles on state school finance policy, teacher labor markets, school leadership labor markets and higher education finance and policy. His recent work has focused on measuring cost variations associated with schooling contexts and student population characteristics, including ways to better design state school finance policies and local district allocation formulas (including Weighted Student Funding) for better meeting the needs of students. Baker, along with Preston Green of Penn State University are co-authors of the chapter on Conceptions of Equity in the recently released Handbook of Research Education Finance and Policy, and co-authors of the chapter on the Politics of Education Finance in the Handbook of Education Politics and Policy and co-authors of the chapter on School Finance in the Handbook of Education Policy of the American Educational Research Association. Professor Baker has also consulted for state legislatures, boards of education and other organizations on education policy and school finance issues and has testified in state school finance litigation in Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. He is a member of the Think Tank Review Panel, a group of academic researchers who conduct technical reviews of publicly released think tank reports on education policy issues.

Published