Furthermore, local school officials have few avenues for escaping state and federal mandates for data collection, standardized testing, and the like. Indeed, as taxpayers, we should want as much information as we can get about how our money is spent and how well students are performing. But this category includes far more than just teachers and classroom supplies. That is also the rough proportion of teachers to non-teachers in the system. While interpreting studies on education policy can be fraught with peril, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that there is an emerging consensus in the academic literature, even if it is not understood yet by politicians or the general public.
Teacher quality is critically important to educational outcomes.
For example, a well-publicized study in Tennessee found that reducing class sizes in kindergarten to 15 students per teacher had statistically significant but modest benefits for students. A school's curriculum and philosophy of learning can have a strong impact on student outcomes. For disadvantaged students in particular, such programs as Success for All and Direct Instruction that use carefully designed, sequential, and scripted lesson plans are very beneficial. Reading instruction is likely to be successful to the extent that it emphasizes phonics. Although parental choice in education has been studied far less than other factors, the early evidence is promising.