[xyzzyz]

There is basically no significant correlation between school spending and performance. If anything, worse performing schools tend to be better funded on average. Thus, there is no reason to expect that increased school funding will translate to better performance. I hope that it makes you feel slightly better about the surplus tax not going to schools.

As for austerity, given the between-state variation, what money is spent on is way more important than how much of it is available. As it turns out, Oregon actually rakes in more money (per capita) in state and local taxes than Washington, so one should rather expect Washington to be the austere one. In fact, Oregon could send every resident a check for $1k every year, and still have 10% more money available per capita than Washington. That’s why I’m rather skeptical about governments claiming to need more money in order for X not to suck: first I want to hear an answer to “why X sucks less in state Y, which spends less money on X than you?”.