Monday’s witness called by legislative respondents in the school funding trial, Max Eden, testified that Pennsylvania schools are well funded, that research is inconclusive as to whether additional financial resources boost academic achievement, and that additional school spending can be counterproductive.
Eden, who spent a full day on the stand, is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank. He was testifying on behalf of the legislators as an expert on school spending and academic achievement and discussed an expert report he prepared for the case.
Prior to trial, petitioners sought to preclude testimony by Eden, contending that he is not qualified as an expert and that his work simply reviews and summarizes the studies of others. In an August 2021 ruling, Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer declined to disqualify Eden as an expert but said he could be questioned as to “alleged deficiencies” in his credentials or opinions during trial.
At trial, the judge again qualified him as an expert, but only after petitioner attorney Dan Cantor had an opportunity to question Eden on his qualifications and opinions.
Eden acknowledged that he had never conducted a formal research study on the relationship between education spending and student achievement or any formal peer-reviewed studies.
Eden acknowledged a dual role at AEI; in addition to his research role, he is the director of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network. And he acknowledged holding “some pretty strong views” and using “some pretty adversarial terms” when Cantor showed him several of his recent tweets.
He agreed he had posted a tweet saying that that the term “teachers union” is a misnomer and that they should be called “K-12 Cartels that hold children hostage for ransom.” He also acknowledged and said he regretted another tweet referenced by Cantor, which suggested that teachers who teach about gender identity may be doing so because they're trying to “groom” children for molestation.
Eden described his expert report as a “literature review” and acknowledged that he had not conducted any original empirical research for it.
In his testimony, Eden argued that Pennsylvania’s spending has increased dramatically over time and ranks among the highest in the world, when compared to other nations.
But on cross-examination, he admitted that the chart he used to show growth in Pennsylvania’s education spending was reprinted from the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative advocacy think tank that opposes increased education spending, and that he had been unable to check several years of the data.
His comparison of Pennsylvania’s education spending to that of other countries, he acknowledged, did not take into account that health care and pension costs classified as school spending in the U.S. are not the responsibility of schools in many countries.
Eden pointed to data from the U.S. Census showing that Pennsylvania ranks sixth among states in public school revenue – spending above the national average. But he acknowledged that the data for per pupil revenue for Pennsylvania that he was presenting might be inflated because charter school students are left out of the enrollment count. In addition, Eden acknowledged during cross-examination that most of the states that are ahead of Pennsylvania are others in the northeastern U.S.
In his expert report, Eden included a chart from a study by the Urban Institute, purporting to show that in education spending, Pennsylvania is slightly “progressive,” meaning that more funding is steered to poor students than non-poor students. The state ranked 24th of 49 states rated on progressivity.
But attorney Cantor pointed out on cross-examination that this chart appeared to be yet another case where the authors overlooked the exclusion of charter school student enrollment in their calculation of per-pupil revenues. Because Pennsylvania’s charter schools are concentrated in high-poverty districts, the exclusion boosts these districts’ calculated per pupil revenue levels and thereby boosts Pennsylvania’s progressivity rating.
In fact, Cantor pointed out, later in the same report, a table (labeled “A2”) evaluating progressivity based on per pupil expenditures, rather than revenue, indicated that Pennsylvania is the most regressive state in the country in its spending patterns.
Eden explained his omission of the second chart, which began on page 17 of the Urban Institute study: “I tend to not necessarily to read towards table A2 in a given study when there is the top-line finding that is graphically represented in multiple forms … which suggests that that's the finding that they believe to be most important.”
Tuesday’s expert witness for legislative respondents, Abel Koury, is expected to provide additional testimony on the relationship between funding and student achievement. Respondents expect to call their final witnesses this week.