EPI research associate Richard Rothstein recently debated the Cato Institute’s Adam Schaeffer on “Has Spending on Public Schools Risen Too High?”  

    This debate appears as part of a CQ Researcher report on school reform, published on April 29, 2011. The report covers the promotion of market-based ideas, such as expanding school choice and basing teachers’ pay on measurable data such as test scores, promoted by venture philanthropists like Microsoft founder Bill Gates; and the reaction of teachers and many education scholars who argue that these reformers seek a simple fix for a complex problem because low-performing students are concentrated in the lowest-income districts, where poor funding, difficulty retaining teachers, and the ravages of poverty make educating students to top achievement more difficult than many realize.