It’s an article of faith among members of the Nevada education establishment that more taxpayer support is the key to lifting the state’s public schools out of an academic morass. This belief is the driving force for the $2 billion in new education spending that lawmakers approved last month. It was the impetus for the two largest tax hikes in state history, each enacted within the past two decades.
And it will be front and center when Nevada education activists seek billions more in additional school spending as the decade progresses — and they will.
Yet while a public school system, by definition, cannot exist without a steady stream of taxpayer “investments,” the relationship between ever-higher spending and results has not been well-established. That could be because many districts don’t wisely direct their existing resources. This is something worth remembering as Nevada again embarks upon an effort to spend its way to academic success.
