A report released Tuesday by an Ohio tax policy expert examined the impact of poverty on school spending and flipped on its head the conventional notion that urban schools continue to spend more and more and produce no better results. The report — Apples to Apples: Ohio School District Expenditures Per Equivalent Pupil — uses state-reported expense data to show that the richest communities, which typically support schools locally through healthy tax bases, can spend more per equivalent student than urban schools. This system has been criticized by some lawmakers as providing a mediocre education subsidized by state taxes generated elsewhere.
