Making Every Dollar Count

As expectations for schools rise and money remains tight, policymakers face growing pressures to strengthen the connection between K-12 spending policies and academic results.

By Robert C. Johnston

Things might be different if public education had its own Rumpelstiltskin. But with nobody spinning straw into gold for schools these days, educators face increased pressure not only to make do with the money they have, but to do more with that money than ever before.

As schools retool to meet the higher academic requirements of state and federal laws, policymakers and researchers are taking a closer look at how the nation’s public schools spend money, and whether the expenditures are connected to their goals.

“We need to do much better with the money in the system,” says Tom Vander Ark, the executive director of the education arm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle and a former superintendent. “The frustrating conclusion one must reach is that if we more effectively allocated and spent the money we have, we could do a pretty good...