Imagine running a small business in Idaho where you purposefully invest the bare minimum.  Corners are cut on professional development and compensation for staff.  Facilities are neglected and sometimes unsafe.  Less-than-optimal equipment is purchased at the lowest possible price.  The needs of customers are ignored.  Employees themselves are selling cupcakes in the break room to fund supplies necessary to do their jobs.  As the owner of this business, can you truly expect a culture of efficacy and booming profits?  Most would agree that expecting great outcomes from a business that fails to invest in fundamental needs is an exercise in futility.  If this sounds like a recipe for failure in business, why do we accept it for our schools?  In the state of Idaho, low effort seems to be the model used for funding education.  As every boss or business leader would say, effort is a fixable problem.

According to Making the Grade 2024, “states are making vastly different levels of effort to fund education.”   Funding effort is described as the “funding allocated to support PK-12 public education as a percentage of the state’s economic activity (GDP).”  As you probably guessed before beginning to read this article, Idaho’s “effort” is questionable.  With a per capita GDP of $47,284 and per pupil funding level of $11,009 (yes, ranked 51 out of 51), Idaho ranks 43rd out of 50 states, receiving an “F” grade on funding effort.  Idaho is, in fact, among the lowest-effort states, despite relatively strong economic growth.  It seems like a silly proposition for anyone, taxpayer, lawmaker, parent, or educator, to argue that we shouldn’t be making a better effort to improve opportunity for the future of our state.  Effort, after all, is a choice, not a destiny.

There is a constituency in Idaho that will argue that just throwing money towards the system never helps.  If we hearken back to the small business analogy, it’s easy to see how a strategy of increased effort with purposeful allocation of additional funding could, in fact, lead to tangible improvements in the systems and conditions that lead to increased efficiency and productivity.  A business that’s willing to invest in training and fair compensation of staff, ensure facilities and working conditions are safe, and provide high-quality equipment to do the job the right way makes all the difference in morale, productivity, and likely, the customer experience.  The Albert Shanker Institute, in its January 2025 report titled Does Money Matter in Education?  finds that there is “an emerging consensus among education researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders as to the importance of adequate and equitable K-12 funding.”  Comparatively, Idaho’s funding efforts are neither adequate nor equitable.  The same report identifies that “infusions of additional money into schools lead to improved student academic achievement and outcomes later in life”.  It takes some serious mental gymnastics to argue against the proposition of a better future for Idahoans and Idaho.

The low-effort business model Idaho subscribes to when it comes to supporting K-12 education has negative real-world consequences.  Among these are larger class sizes, severely underfunded programs for special populations, fewer mental health resources, outdated facilities, and a massively disparate reliance on local levies, deepening inequity among Idaho’s diverse systems of schooling.  The breadth of these concerns cannot be addressed at once, but they can surely form part of a to-do list for Idaho decision-makers.

As we knock on the door of the 2026 legislative session, urge your lawmaking representatives to help Idaho remove its current moniker of “low effort”.  Every dollar invested in education yields long-term economic benefits for our state and local communities.  Let’s remove the burden of begging for educational opportunity that is forced on our students, families, teachers, and school systems.  Depressing revenue and fragmenting funding are policy choices that perpetuate low effort politics.  Legislators control this lever.  May our trusted elected officials work to raise Idaho’s effort to at least the national median.  It’s not about extravagance; it’s about adequacy.

Matthew McDaniel, PhD is an assistant professor and Director of the M.Ed. in Educational Leadership program at The College of Idaho.