The When, Whether & Who of Worthless Wonky Studies: School Finance Reform Edition
I’ve previously written about the growing number of rigorous peer reviewed and other studies which tend to show positive effects of state school finance reforms. But what about all of those accounts to the contrary? The accounts that seem so dominant in the policy conversations on the topic. What is that vast body of research that suggests that school finance reforms don’t matter? That it’s all money down the rat-hole. That in fact, judicial orders to increase funding for schools actually hurt children?
Beyond utterly absurd graphs and tables like Bill Gates’ “turn the curve upside down” graph, and Dropout Nation’s even more absurd graph, there have been a handful of recent studies and entire books dedicated to proving that court ordered school finance reforms simply have no positive effect on children. Some do appear in peer reviewed journals, despite egregious (and really obvious) methodological flaws. And yes, some really do go so far as to claim that court ordered school finance reforms “harm our children.”[1]
The premise that additional funding for schools often leveraged toward class size reduction, additional course
