There is no evidence Kansas could achieve higher student success through expanded school choice.

This post is from a report on school finance released by KASB as the Kansas Legislature works to develop a new school finance plan in compliance with the Kansas Supreme Court decision on adequate funding. Today: states with tax credit programs to provide scholarships to private schools have no better academic success than Kansas, and in most cases, worse.

Using data from the Cato Institute and the Friedman Foundation, KASB identified eight states that have had tax credit programs similar to the Kansas program since at least 2008, to give some time for the programs to have an impact that could be measured on national reports. The following charts compare Kansas outcomes on the 15 indicators used in KASB’s state education report card with the average performance of these states.

In almost every case, Kansas performs equal to or higher than states with established tax credits. These states spent, on average, $300 more per pupil than Kansas in FY 2014, equal to nearly $150 million. The few states that rank above Kansas on multiple, but not all, measures (Indiana and Iowa) ranked higher in spending per pupil, as well.