A new study from the Educational Testing Services (ETS) has taken a look at school funding, staffing resources and achievement gaps over the past 20 years with interesting results.

"In the report, the authors study several factors including what they defined as human resources; pupil to teacher ratios, average class sizes and teacher wages as they relate to quality,” according to a statement from ETS.

The study found that teacher wages started becoming significantly less competitive between 2000 and 2012 in every single state.

"From 2000 to 2012, teacher wages in every state became less competitive. Over that period the state average reduction in wage competitiveness was 12%,” ETS said.

The report predictably also found that states do a bad job of providing more resources to areas that are in more need, like high-poverty areas.

”As a rule of thumb, for a state finance system to provide equal educational opportunity, that system must ensure sufficiently higher resources in higher need settings than in lower need settings," says David G. Sciarra of the Education Law Center of New Jersey and one of the reports commissioners.

"We characterize such a system as progressive. By contrast, many state school finance systems barely achieve `flat' funding between high and low need settings and still others remain regressive."

Read the full report.

Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

5/17/2016