The Utah Foundation recently released a study titled, “Making the Grade? K-12 Outcomes and Spending in Utah” that tries to make sense of why Utah, which spends less on K-12 education than any other state at $7179 per pupil — $5000 below the national average — still does well in most areas measured and even outperforms many higher spending states.
Although Utah lawmakers and other state leaders may congratulate themselves on these academic outcomes at bargain basement prices, if you scratch the surface the results show a large gap in educational attainment that desperately needs addressing.
Many Utah students have a lot going for them. When compared to both neighboring and peer states, we have a higher percentage of children in two-parent families with at least one parent who graduated from college. This is a huge predictor of a family’s socioeconomic stability, and thus, student success.
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