State Did Not Ask Education Researchers to Analyze How School Districts Currently Spend Funds

A state-commissioned report that recommended Oregon spend billions more to improve its student outcomes did not explore how schools and districts have spent their investments thus far.

The American Institutes for Research report’s solution to dismal student outcomes provided a counter-narrative to an earlier presentation this legislative session from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, which mapped increased spending since 2013 against worsening outcomes for Oregon students. As school funding advocates have pushed for more money to go toward the state’s public schools, legislators—and the governor—have weighed funding against accountability.

School funding advocates rallied around the AIR report as additional proof that Oregon schools are chronically underfunded. But when the AIR researchers presented their findings to the House and Senate Committee on Education in late February, legislators were skeptical that more money alone would help fix the state’s education crisis. Several asked questions about if the state and districts could spend their existing dollars more effectively.

It turns out the state never asked AIR researchers to delve into how Oregon dollars were spent.

“Per the request for proposal that AIR responded to, the purpose of the commissioned study was to evaluate the state’s existing public school finance system and make recommendations for improvement,” said AIR’s principal research economist Jesse Levin. “We were not asked to explore how schools spend the funding they receive.”

His comment comes in response to a Monday memo by Monica Cox and Lisa Geltzer, both of the state’s Legislative Policy and Research Office. The memo addressed Frequently Asked Questions about the state’s commissioned report, including ones about effective spending.

The two wrote that AIR’s research showed some Oregon school districts succeeded in producing higher outcomes with lower spending, while others spent more and produced lower outcomes. “It was not within AIR’s scope of the study to look into why,” they noted.

“AIR researchers observed an irregularity in Oregon’s high fiscal effort (the proportion of the state budget for education) and low student outcomes compared to other states. Importantly, however, their study did not explore why,” the LPRO researchers wrote.

They added: “The AIR study also found that compared to other states, Oregon ranked near the top for increase in per-pupil expenditures and near the bottom for decline in student outcomes over the COVID pandemic period, but they did not explore why.”

AIR’s six-part report reviewed and evaluated the state’s Quality Education Model. The QEM, which projects the cost to adequately educate students in Oregon, has long been cited by school funding advocates as evidence the state is underfunding education. Under Oregon Senate Bill 1552, passed in 2024, the model got a closer analysis. Researchers were also tasked with providing an alternative cost estimate to the QEM.

The AIR report concluded that the methodology behind the QEM was sound, but found the model hinged on Oregon students achieving just one outcome: a 90% graduation rate. The report proposed that a sounder education funding model would try to achieve other outcomes alongside graduation rate, including proficiency for reading and math and lower rates of chronic absenteeism.

Assuming no changes to the efficiency or quality of education services provided, the report suggested Oregon spend billions more to improve all those outcomes. In 2022–23, Oregon would have had to make up a funding gap of $2.8 billion to catch up to AIR’s recommended numbers. That’s about $1.87 billion more than the QEM would have required: $935 million for that year.

This legislative cycle, Governor Tina Kotek has released a pair of education accountability bills that will try to tie spending increases to better outcomes, both for school districts and the Oregon Department of Education. “I don’t believe in writing a blank check, and I don’t believe in accepting the status quo when it comes to delivering for our students,” Kotek said at a March 10 press conference.

The Edunomics presentation has received pushback of its own since its presentation in the Oregon Legislature, with concerns that it was presented out of context. Critics have said it oversimplifies the relationship between spending and outcomes, and others have criticized it for not taking into account Oregon’s chronic underfunding of education.

Dr. Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab, has said her presentation was never meant to suggest that increased education spending would not result in better outcomes, but instead was meant to push for more effective spending. It seems this is a point of agreement for the two drastically different reports.

“AIR and Edunomics have each stated that the best approach to improving student outcomes will consider both adequate levels of funding and more efficient spending,” the LPRO researchers wrote. “[AIR’s] analyses found broad variation in the relationship between district spending and student outcomes that warrants further study to learn from differences in how districts spend their funds.”