Could continuing the trend of increased funding make a difference in delivering better outcomes for students? The logic of this approach is simple, but the evidence of conflicting incentives and inherent inefficiencies in the K-12 system calls it into question. That system is generally designed to provide mass, compulsory schooling more than it is designed to serve the diverse needs of individual learners.
As the late economist Milton Friedman famously said: “Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling. The proper subject of concern is education. The activities of the government are mostly limited to schooling.” Education policy, properly devised, should aim higher than the goal of corralling and keeping as many students as possible in school.
The disconnect between the nation’s school funding systems and the primary goal of education is nothing new. In 2008 the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education concluded a six-year, in-depth study of the topic with a dire assessment: “What we have now is a finance system that is focused on maintaining programs and paying adults, not on searching for the most effective way to educate our children. This system doesn’t fit America’s needs.”[38]
Simply giving schools more money to spend is unlikely to drive substantial improvements in student outcomes. Two early studies did show academic benefits for previously low-funded Michigan school districts after they received large funding boosts from Proposal A.[39] But a 2016 Mackinac Center school-level analysis tracked 10 subsequent years of spending. The study found no statistically significant relationship between more spending and better results on 27 of 28 different measures of academic achievement.[40]
A 2016 education finance study paid for by the state arrived at only a slightly more encouraging conclusion: Each additional $1,000 spent per pupil would add 1 percentage point to the proportion of students proficient in math and reading. According to that calculation, K-12 spending would have to surpass $30,000 per student before half of Michigan’s 11th graders could do math proficiently.[41] The study called for a much smaller funding increase, with an estimated price tag of about $1.4 billion, a statewide average of about $1,000 per student.[42]
More recent school finance studies call for even larger amounts of new funding for Michigan schools. A January 2018 study released by a group representing businesses, foundations and public education interests called for a $2.8 billion annual funding boost at the time of its release. Their recommendations were based on interviews with panels of school district officials.[*] Both the 2016 and 2018 reports failed to identify where the added money should come from, while assuming districts would continue to spend any new money as they usually do. In 2020, Ed Trust-Midwest proposed funding policy changes that would tally an additional $5.4 billion. Unlike its two predecessors, it explicitly recognized the need for more effective spending, but offered very few specific recommendations beyond a requirement that school districts develop and publish their spending plans.[43]
Major studies have called for Michigan to enact large spending increases for K-12 education. But those studies have not connected the dots to show how more money would yield improved outcomes for students. That’s a significant problem.
[*] Tom Gantert, “Public Schooling Interests Recommend Spending More On Public Schooling” (Michigan Capitol Confidential, Feb. 2, 2018), https://perma.cc/PXY9-9FC3. The price tag is likely somewhat smaller today. In May 2021, the School Finance Research Collaborative released an update of its recommended base per-student cost from $9,590 to $10,421, an 8.7% increase in raw dollars. See “Update to Costing Out the Base Resources Needed to Meet Michigan’s Standards and Requirements” (Augenblick, Palaich & Associates, 2021), https://perma.cc/9PB5-LUA4. Over the same three-year period, state-level NPEFS data shows that current per-pupil spending rose by 9.5%, while statewide enrollment declined.