Providing perspective on Nevada’s education funding

Over the weekend, liberal pundit Jon Ralston decried Nevada’s level of education funding in a post entitled, “Las Vegas Perspective lacks … perspective.”

Nevertheless, [Jeremy] Aguero praised Gov. Brian Sandoval for “making education a priority.” (To be fair, first lady Kathleen Sandoval spoke after him….)

But has he? Yes, he restored half a billion dollars in 2013. But spending is still well below other states, and many of those in the audience support infusing more money but can’t agree on how to fund it.

This is the typical liberal dichotomy: You either support education by wanting to spend more or you oppose education if you don’t want to dramatically increase spending.

But it’s a false dichotomy, because there is little to no correlation between spending and student achievement.

Cato education scholar Andrew Coulson provides some needed perspective on Nevada’s education funding and how it relates to student achievement.

The question isn’t why hasn’t Nevada dramatically increased education spending, but why is no one being held accountable for Nevada’s dramatic increase in education spending while education outcomes have decreased?

Nevada’s far from alone in failing to turn significant education spending increases into higher student achievement. Here’s Massachusetts, the state with the highest ACT scores in the country.

So if spending more doesn’t work — and it hasn’t for 50 years and for 50 states — what should Nevada do?

Implement school choice. School choice, whether through ESAs, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships or vouchers, provides a proven way to increase student achievement.

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., have some form of school choice, and students in those states have seen their test scores and graduation rates increase. What’s amazing is that the test scores in public schools have increased after school choice began in these states.

So do conservatives and libertarians have proven solutions to Nevada’s education problems? Yes, we sure do.

And after 50 years of trying it the liberal way, Nevada’s students — your children and mine — need school choice to actually increase their achievement, instead of just spending more.