From 2009 to 2014, school districts in Oklahoma faced the challenge of educating a growing population of students to high academic standards and increased accountability while total state aid had been restricted to flat or negative levels annually. This study presents new knowledge about how district spending of increasingly scarce dollars relates to student achievement as an indication of how money matters in education. The analysis compared two groups of school districts that were demographically similar yet displayed varying degrees of academic achievement in order to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in their spending.