Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the U.S. now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. In this seminar, Eric Hanushek concludes the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Hanushek proposes a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions on running schools, leading to improved student performance.

As CA continues to wrestle with the challenges of providing sufficient funding for schools, understanding the relationships among school funding, effective school resources, and outcomes is essential. In this seminar Norton Grubb addresses four principal questions: (1) What kinds of school resources make a difference to outcomes? (2) Why is the relationship between spending per student and outcomes so weak? (3) Why are outcomes so inequitable? (4) And what should CA do now, in both school finance and other areas of school policy, to avoid further damage to the state’s education system?