•January 30, 2019•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

This past week, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) proposed doubling 2019-20 state school funding, from $8 billion to almost $16 billion, the equivalent of raising the individual income tax rate from 5 to 7 percent. Should the money be available, which it won’t be, the challenge would lie in translating the new resources into significant gains in student achievement. The historical record is not encouraging.
At the outset here, let the record show: I favor all the money for education that will make a difference. I favor equal spending for all schools, more for disadvantaged kids. I am not writing to “blame the victims.” I am not writing to make a case for less school funding.
In the 1996, economists Richard Stout and Marty Eisenberg and I produced a report that ranked test performance of all Illinois public schools by the average household incomes of each district.
We found what umpteen research reports have found over the decades—that the incomes of district residents appear to drive achievement, rather than the amount spent in the schools. That is, the lower the incomes, the lower the achievement.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.