Perhaps forcing schools to focus school spending on priorities is not such bad thing afterall. As today’s Sacramento Bee reports:
It’s a trend that would seem to defy conventional wisdom: As public school spending has declined in California in recent years, student achievement test scores have gone up.
Statewide, school districts spent 6 percent less from 2008 to 2010, but the percentage of second- to seventh-grade students scoring proficient on the state’s standardized English test rose from 48 percent to 55 percent. . . .
In El Dorado County, spending fell 9 percent from 2008 to 2010. But test scores rose dramatically. The proportion of students in grades two through seven testing proficient or above in English rose from 63 percent to 68 percent; those at or above proficient in math shot from 65 percent to 72 percent.