> The article's methodology looks at academic achievement directly, so there is no need to use spending as a proxy.
No, it doesn't. It looks at performance on one specific test. Which could very easily be uncorrelated or even negatively correlated with actual "academic achievement".
Both funding levels and test scores are features you might include in a model that predicts the overall quality of education a student will receive.
The authors start from the premise that they're trying to find a function that minimizes costs while maximizing test scores. The publications they are criticizing start form the premise that you want to find the best school for your kid.
As an aside, twenty years ago I would believe that test scores are a fairly decent metric. Today, I'm inclined to believe the opposite. Some of the worst schools I've volunteered in did relatively well on standardized tests all things considered. But the education was abysmal; they knew they couldn't teach the material, and they needed to get enough "proficient"s, so they started teaching test-taking instead.
Conversely, schools that would get those "proficient"s by default had the breathing room to step back and e.g. read some of Euclid's Elements in the Geometry course, or incorporate some extra-curricular mathematical programming and basic proof writing into the algebra sequence, or fund a robust arts program.
Those things probably didn't boost their standardized test scores, since standardized tests don't test for those things, but it absolutely made a night-and-day difference in "academic achievement".
So, yet again, to beat a dead horse, NAEP != "academic achievement".
But it's even worse than that. The best metric, from a purely predictive perspective, for whether a school provides a good education, is the level at which the local community taxes itself to pay for education. Wealthy suburbs tend to have excellent schools. The authors of the article even, confusingly, concede this point.
If I were building a model to tell you where your kids will get a good education -- which is exactly what "U.S. News, Education Week, WalletHub" are doing -- I would absolutely include local taxation, bond issue pass rates, etc. in that model. And would probably weight them at least as heavily as ACT or NAEP or state standardized test scores. It's an errily good proxy for everything from teacher quality to parental involvement. I suspect that if money were on the line, the authors would do the same.
Maybe the only serious take-away from this article is that consumer advice shouldn't be mistaken for policy-making advice. WalletHub might be able to tell you how to navigate the current system in a way that maximizes your kids' academic attainment, but it's not necessarily going to provide you with great policy-making advice. Which... duh.
> the best metric, from a purely predictive perspective, for whether a school provides a good education, is the level at which the local community taxes itself to pay for education. Wealthy suburbs tend to have excellent schools.
That’s a great metric for predicting how rich and white your student population is. If you want to equate “rich and white students” with “quality” you’re welcome to do so.
What you are observing is basically just the fact that "rich and white" is extremely highly correlated with "well-educated" in this country. The other, related, correlation is extremely unfortunate.
No, it doesn't. It looks at performance on one specific test. Which could very easily be uncorrelated or even negatively correlated with actual "academic achievement".
Both funding levels and test scores are features you might include in a model that predicts the overall quality of education a student will receive.
The authors start from the premise that they're trying to find a function that minimizes costs while maximizing test scores. The publications they are criticizing start form the premise that you want to find the best school for your kid.
As an aside, twenty years ago I would believe that test scores are a fairly decent metric. Today, I'm inclined to believe the opposite. Some of the worst schools I've volunteered in did relatively well on standardized tests all things considered. But the education was abysmal; they knew they couldn't teach the material, and they needed to get enough "proficient"s, so they started teaching test-taking instead.
Conversely, schools that would get those "proficient"s by default had the breathing room to step back and e.g. read some of Euclid's Elements in the Geometry course, or incorporate some extra-curricular mathematical programming and basic proof writing into the algebra sequence, or fund a robust arts program.
Those things probably didn't boost their standardized test scores, since standardized tests don't test for those things, but it absolutely made a night-and-day difference in "academic achievement".
So, yet again, to beat a dead horse, NAEP != "academic achievement".
But it's even worse than that. The best metric, from a purely predictive perspective, for whether a school provides a good education, is the level at which the local community taxes itself to pay for education. Wealthy suburbs tend to have excellent schools. The authors of the article even, confusingly, concede this point.
If I were building a model to tell you where your kids will get a good education -- which is exactly what "U.S. News, Education Week, WalletHub" are doing -- I would absolutely include local taxation, bond issue pass rates, etc. in that model. And would probably weight them at least as heavily as ACT or NAEP or state standardized test scores. It's an errily good proxy for everything from teacher quality to parental involvement. I suspect that if money were on the line, the authors would do the same.
Maybe the only serious take-away from this article is that consumer advice shouldn't be mistaken for policy-making advice. WalletHub might be able to tell you how to navigate the current system in a way that maximizes your kids' academic attainment, but it's not necessarily going to provide you with great policy-making advice. Which... duh.