Reading Proficiency

From 1999 to 2012, the reading proficiency rate for 17–year-olds remained nearly unchanged, declining by 1 point on a 500-point scale.

See sources below

Educational Achievement

By Lisa Snell

According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend assessments, over the past 40 years, student achievement has remained static.[1] The NAEP is “the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.”[2] For high school seniors, very little has changed in terms of academic performance on the NAEP since the early 1970s. In 1971, 17-year-olds averaged 285 points (out of 500) in reading proficiency; in 1999, the average had risen to 288 points, and in 2012, it dipped to 287 — zero statistical difference since 1971. Changes in 12th-grade math[3] and science[4] NAEP scores look about the same.

Meanwhile, per-pupil school costs have risen substantially over the same four decades.[5] In 1970–1971, per-pupil spending in public schools was $6,112, and by 2011, that number had grown to $13,507 (in constant 2013 dollars).[6]

This growth in education spending has underwritten significant staffing increases.[7] According to a 2013 report examining decades of school employment growth, between fiscal year 1950 and 2009, the number of K–12 public school employees grew by 386 percent. The student population increased by 96 percent over the same time period.[8] Administrators and non-teaching staff increased by 702 percent — more than seven times the increase in students. In comparison, the number of teachers increased by 252 percent.

The ratio of students to school personnel has changed dramatically as a result. In 1950, the number of students per public school employee was 19.3; by 2011, it was 8.1 students per employee.[9] Similarly, the pupil-to-teacher ratio fell from 27.5 students per teacher in 1950to a historic low of 15 students per teacher in the fall of 2012.[10]

International test scores also show that education funding and academic performance do not necessarily correlate. In a 2013 report, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examined the relationship between countries’ education spending and academic achievement and found that spending above $35,000 per student cumulatively between ages six and 15, is unrelated to performance.[11] In fact, nations that spend more than $100,000 per student cumulatively during those school years — such as Norway, Switzerland, and the United States — get about the same results as nations with less than half the per-pupil spending levels, such as Estonia, Hungary, and Poland.

Both national and international spending and achievement data demonstrate that money alone cannot guarantee improvements in education performance.

— Lisa Snell is Director of Education and Child Welfare at the Reason Foundation.

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Charter School Enrollment

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Additional Resources

Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement?

How Escalating Education Spending Is Killing Crucial Reform

Sources

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1971, 1975, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2004, 2008, and 2012 Long-Term Trend Reading Assessments, (accessed April 7, 2014).

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Endnotes

1. Bobby D. Rampey, Gloria S. Dion, and Patricia L. Donohue, “NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress,” U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, April 2009, (accessed May 13, 2014).
2. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “NAEP Overview,” (accessed July 11, 2014).
3. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “Long-Term Trends in Reading and Mathematics Achievement,” 2013, (accessed May 13, 2014).
4. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “Long-Term Trends in Student Science Performance,” NCES 98–465, September 1998, (accessed May 13, 2014).
5. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “Expenditures,” 2013, (accessed May 13, 2014).
6. U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, “Total and current expenditures per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, 1919–20 through 2010–11,” (accessed July 10, 2014).
7. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2013, (accessed May 13, 2014).
8. Benjamin Scafidi, PhD, “The School Staffing Surge: Decades of Employment Growth in America’s Public Schools, Part II,” The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, February 2, 2013, (accessed May 13, 2014).
9. U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, “Staff employed in public elementary and secondary school systems, by type of assignment: Selected years, 1949–50 through fall 2011,” (accessed July 11, 2014).
10. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “Teacher Trends,” 2013, (accessed May 13, 2014).
11. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Does Money Buy Strong Performance in PISA?” PISA in Focus, February 2012, (accessed May 13, 2014).

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