TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – If you’ve ever wondered why left-wing progressives have such a strong hatred of standardized testing, check out the findings of a new study from the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

Cato scholars have tracked states’ K-12 spending and SAT scores for the past forty years and concluded that higher levels of classroom spending do not lead to increases in student learning.

In other words, the teacher unions’ long-standing argument that America’s schools are struggling to educate kids because they don’t receive enough funding is bunk.

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And scholars know it’s bunk, thanks to data contained in standardized test scores, which is what the college-entrance SATs are. That’s the main reason why teacher union leaders and other progressives are so emphatically opposed to standardized testing.

Watchdog.com explains Cato’s findings:

“Using SAT scores — adjusted for participation and student demographics — the study shows states incurred on average a 3 percent decline in academic performance since 1972, when the federal government began collecting relevant data. In the same period, inflation-adjusted spending has more than doubled.”

Andrew Coulson, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, told Watchdog.org that the 40-year analysis shows every state school system in the country has “suffered a collapse in student productivity.”

“Essentially, there has been no correlation between state spending and academic performance,” Coulson said.

The Cato study should be of interest to voters in Florida, where both Democrats and Republicans are trying to prove their pro-education credentials by talking about how much more money they want to send to the state’s public schools.

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Republican Gov. Rick Scott, for example, is in a tough re-election fight, and is trumpeting his $18.84 billion education funding request to the state legislature as “the highest funding level for K-12 education in Florida history,” Watchdog.org reports.

Savvy voters won’t be overly impressed with that once they learn that “Florida suffered a 3 percent decline in student performance while boosting per-pupil education funding by 80 percent” over the last four decades, according to the news site.

“The bulk of the funding increase has been rising total employment by the public schools, out of proportion with rising (student) enrollment,” Coulson told Watchdog.org.

“In education there’s little choice, next to no competition, and anyone who sets out to run a business educating children is looked at with suspicion,” he added. “Until that changes, we can expect spending to keep rising and performance to keep stagnating.”