In US Dollars, across 23 different countries, there is almost no correlation between TIMSS scores and annual education cost per student. Based only on this data, TIMSS scores are not increased by increasing education spending, nor are they increased by decreasing education spending. This suggests that, at the least, the increase in education spending in the US from 4.8% of GDP in 1959 to 7.7% in 1992 was a costly public policy with little to no hope for success. The fact that SAT scores decreased 98 points during the same time that the US increased the cost of education by 2.9% of GDP--or more than $215 billion per year--suggests that our problem may have been that we actually increased education spending too much.

In other words, the increased spending encouraged so many frivolous educational programs that important core education was ignored (e.g., basket weaving displaced math education but became more popular than math even though there is little demand for basket weavers). The mere fact that Japan spends almost half ($4,727/student/year) of what the US spends and scores 105 TIMSS points higher, or that Korea spends less than a third as much ($2,132/student/year) and scores 107 TIMSS points higher, proves that it is possible to get much more education quality with much less education spending.

The case for reducing education spending by this much gets stronger when the few countries for which data is available regarding education costs as a percent of GDP and TIMSS scores are compared, because correlation does exist here. For roughly each 40 point increase in TIMSS scores, education cost decreases 1% of GDP.

The challenge is to find out how to reduce US education spending by $215 billion per year at the same time that math education quality is increased 107 TIMSS points.

Copyright @ 2007 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party