Two years ago, Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jay Greene was retained
by the state of New York to write an expert report as part of its defense in New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights, et al. v. The State of New York.1 The Heritage Foundation is now able to publish that report, enabling Americans to see the evidence debunking the claim that increasing education spending generally leads to improved student outcomes.
This claim has become almost a matter of consensus among education policy research- ers, more than 450 of whom signed a group letter stating, “Research is abundantly clear that money matters for student achievement and other important life outcomes, and this is especially the case for low-income students.”2 That sentence contains four citations, all of which refer to research conducted by Kirabo Jackson, an economics professor at North- western University. Jackson also served as an expert witness in New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights, et al. v. The State of New York, but on behalf of the plaintiffs. The report reproduced below by Jay Greene is a rebuttal of Jackson’s claims about the effects of increasing school spending.