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Data Debunks Notion that more Spending Is Key to Better Education or Lower Crime Rates
Townhall.com ^ | February 7, 2015 | Daniel J. Mitchell

Posted on 02/07/2015 8:39:36 AM PST by Kaslin

For both moral reasons and economic reasons, we should have small government.

But even a curmudgeonly libertarian like me also thinks it’s important to have effective and efficient government.

Fortunately, there’s no contradiction between these views. Indeed, academic researchers have found that nations with smaller government also have more efficient government. With Singapore being a very powerful example.

This is why I periodically share data looking at how much governments spend compared to how much they deliver.

Though this can be a depressing exercise because – to cite one example – no government in the world spends more on education than the United States, yet we get very sub-par results.

But what if we compare cities inside the United States on this basis? Are there big differences in how much some local governments spend and the results they get?

The answer is yes, emphatically so.

Here are some excerpts from an article in The Atlantic on which local governments do reasonably well – and very poorly – in terms of education outcomes on a per-dollar-spent basis.

…education spending isn’t inherently bad—what matters is the result. Some school districts get lots in return for the amount of money they spend. …the online financial resource WalletHub has crunched the numbers on school spending at 90 of the most-populated cities across the country, revealing which ones are getting the most—and least—bang for their buck. To arrive at the findings, WalletHub divided each city’s aggregate test scores in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math by its total per-capita education spending. The researchers then adjusted those figures for various socioeconomic factors, such as the poverty rate and percentage of households that don’t speak English as their first language.

Here are the 10 cities that purportedly do the best job on a per-dollar-spent basis.

And here are the cities that do the worst job.

I guess I’m not overly surprised that cities in California and New York generally rank at the bottom.

Though I wonder whether the results would look significantly different if education spending was measured on a per-pupil basis. That would seem a relevant distinction.

But here’s the key takeaway. Some cities spend two to three times as much per capita on education, yet they actually deliver worse outcomes!

Something all of us should remember next time some politician, whether Obama or some local hack, whines about the “need” for more money for schools.

Now let’s look at how wisely – or ineptly – local governments spend money on crime prevention.

Here’s some of WalletHub’s analysis.

With tax season approaching, WalletHub assessed how efficiently the 110 most populated U.S. cities spend taxpayer dollars on police protection. We did so by calculating each city’s ROI on police spending based on crime rates and per-capita expenditures on police forces after normalizing the data by poverty rate, unemployment rate and median household income. …note that “Adjusted ROI Rank” reflects the results of our analysis after controlling for the three economic factors, whereas “Unadjusted ROI Rank” reflects the results before normalizing the data by the same factors.

So which cities get decent bang for the buck?

And here are the 10 cities that get the least value compared to resources devoted to crime prevention.

Gee, what a surprise to see New York City (once again) at the bottom of the list. And I can only imagine how the city will rank after a few years of Bill de Blasio.

And what’s the story with Long Beach, CA?!? Why are they among the worst on both lists?

Anyhow, kudos to WalletHub for producing both these comparisons. This is good factual data that enables people to see whether their city is being competent or wasteful.

Specifically, why are taxpayers in places such as St. Louis and Orlando spending three or four times as much, on a per-capita basis, as taxpayers in cities such as Lincoln and Louisville?

P.S. Returning to the big picture, we’re more likely to have competent and effective government if it is limited in size and scope. Or, as Mark Steyn humorously observed, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: crime; crimerate; education; publiceducation

1 posted on 02/07/2015 8:39:36 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Spending has nothing to do with quality education.


2 posted on 02/07/2015 8:41:08 AM PST by stephenjohnbanker (My Batting Average( 1,000) (GOPe is that easy to read))
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To: Kaslin

Cut the administrative staff in half.

Fire the Teacher’s Unions.

Cut the curricula to eliminate social engineering, marginal languages, and anti-American courses.


3 posted on 02/07/2015 8:52:58 AM PST by G Larry (Obama may not be "THE" Antichrist, but he is certainly America's Antichrist.)
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To: Kaslin
One of the biggest myths is that poor students are "forced" to go to bad public schools and get rotten educations because of it. The facts are: rotten students make rotten schools. Robert Weissberg wrote a book called "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools" where he pretty much detailed it was the bad students in the "bad" government schools that made them bad schools.

And many of the parents of those rotten students had/have opportunities to put their rotten kids in good charter or private schools. Most of them turned down the chance. This should throw cold water on the false notion of many conservatives that all you have to do to improve the education of poor/bad students is to put them in good schools. What most likely happens is the bad students drag down the good schools and make life miserable for many non-rotten students forced to share space with them.

4 posted on 02/07/2015 8:56:26 AM PST by driftless2 (For long term happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: Kaslin

It would be interesting to see a scatterplot of this data vs. %voting D, %voting R or, the D/R voting ratio. I suspect the correlation would be nonzero, to the benefit of Rs. Because Ds base the goodness of a place on the intentions more than the outcomes, e.g. Maryland being a “high-scoring place” in the gun department, because it has very strict laws and heavy enforcement, rather than low crime rates.


5 posted on 02/07/2015 8:59:08 AM PST by coloradan (The US has become a banana republic, except without the bananas - or the republic.)
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To: Kaslin

Something all of us should remember next time some politician, whether Obama or some local hack, whines about the “need” for more money for schools.

...

They see that money buying votes, not educating children.


6 posted on 02/07/2015 9:04:01 AM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: Kaslin

The data have been “debunking” any correlation between spending and educational outcomes for fifty years.


7 posted on 02/07/2015 10:05:58 AM PST by Carry_Okie (Those who profess noblesse oblige regress to droit du seigneur.)
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