As far as Head Royce goes, the reason they upgrade their capital plant is because they have to compete to get the best students. Same thing goes for any good private university.

Public schools do not have to compete. Put another way, they do not *get* to compete. If they did, they too could select the students with the best parents and do very well.

The point is, the money only matters in a competitive situation. So, I believe my statement still makes sense. Extra spending on schools does virtually nothing to improve student achievement.

What provokes me to respond to this particular article is the fact that I, too, read the aforementioned two articles in the WSJ yesterday. In fact, I was also, as you were, struck by the very same quote: “California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.”

What does this statistic tell us? Most directly, it signifies that high-teacher pay does not necessarily correlate with better student performance.

But, to say any more we must delve deeper. Does this mean that ‘extra spending on education has virtually no impact on student achievement’? Not at all. Why would Oakland’s private Head-Royce school spend $26 million as part of its Master Plan to upgrade the school? Certainly part of it can be attributed to attract prospective students. But let’s go to their website to see what they say. The five overarching goals state that improvements are proposed to:

1. Strengthen Our K-12 Community
2. Support Academic Excellence
3. Create a Better Student Environment
4. Improve Safety and Security
5. Respond to Community Needs

http://www.headroyce.org/page.cfm?p=1202

Do we not wish to attract the best available talent to teach our children? Salaries might help in this regard. Should it not be a public goal and duty to provide our public school students with the same kinds of benefits (albeit to a much lesser degree) as Head-Royce seeks to provides its students?

Now, I don’t mean to oversimplify the issue. Where the money comes from and how it is implemented is an entirely intertwined issue and must be recognized. I am sure there will be many discussions to come with regards to these issues.
My simple point is that the WSJ article does not even recognize the higher cost of living in CA (which obviously affects salaries), nor does it address the fact that teachers nationwide are significantly underpaid. Thus, in taking a simple statistic, which points out that high-teacher pay does not necessarily correlate with better student performance, it seems that you, as well as the authors of the WSJ article, extrapolate a whole number of things, which may or may not be true.

I agree with you that parental involvement, and just as if not more important, peer influence, is more fundamental to a student’s success than simply throwing money into a general education pot. But, to not recognize the benefit of public spending on education and especially on teacher’s salaries in order to provide opportunity to public school students, doesn’t capture the picture.