Jill Stewart writes in her column here that Californians don’t know what they’re spending for public education:

A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that while Californians have strong opinions on what to do about public education, they have no idea what’s going on. I give the public an “F” in Education.

As a wonderfully sneaky test of awareness, PPIC asked Californians in a recent survey how much of the state budget is spent on public schools. They were clueless. Only one in three knew that public education is by far the biggest item, sucking up half the budget–very roughly, $50 billion of $100 billion.

Ignorant voters insist more money pour into the schools, not knowing California spends more on schools than the entire operating budgets of each of the 49 other states, including New York.

Here’s reality: The National Education Association (NEA) and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) rank California in the middle on per-pupil-spending. We’re at the comfy median. We do not “under-fund” our schools despite our many troubles.

Jill has more — including how people have no idea about how the state spends any of its money. Read the whole thing.

The most important piece of data from the National Education Association study study that Jill cites is Table H-11, which shows “Current Expenditures for Public K-12 Schools Per Student In Fall Enrollment.” California ranked #29 of 50 states (plus DC) with per-student spending of $7,244; the US average was $7,875 and the median $7,428. The median is the more relevant comparison because the average (the mean) is pulled up by DC, which spends nearly $2,000 per student more than any state. California spends $184 (2.5%) per student per year less than the median — a pretty insignificant amount.

One other bit of data is interesting. Expenditure per-capita can serve as a rough proxy for taxation level, and here again, California is near the mean — this time slightly above it. Table H-8, “Per Capita Expenditures of State and Local Government for Public K-12 Schools” shows California #22 of 51 at $1,273; the US average was $1,298 (pulled up $42 by Alaska) with a median is $1,235. In short, the citizens of California are not short-changing their schools.

The state does lead the nation in one area. In the executive summary, the NEA says that the average public school teacher salary for 2002-03 was $45,891. California had the highest average pay in the country at $56,283, followed by Connecticut ($55,367) and New Jersey ($54,158). And since the NEA is the lobby for public school teachers, we have to be suspicious of the provenance of these numbers.

We crunched some other numbers from the report and found that California is right at the large-state average for per-student overhead (all costs except teacher pay). But of the ten largest states by enrollment, it’s #8 in per-student spending on teaching.

How do you reconcile the highest salaries in the country with below-average per-student spending on teaching? The devil’s bargain that the California Teachers Association has won for itself is that its members are well compensated, but since they cost so much, fewer are hired, resulting in the fourth highest student-teacher ratio in the nation.

So … despite teacher’s union propaganda, California’s spending per student is near the national average. We also recognize that it’s 8th out of 10 among the largest states (although the two behind it are the second and fourth largest states, Texas and Florida).

But … spend more? The only way to sell that is to fix the #1 error in the analysis above and ensure that increased input (spending) really does result in higher instructional quality and better outcomes. Can anyone today argue that it does? Look at the disaster of the DC system — with the highest per-student spending in the nation — to see why we can’t believe it. Here in California, the state heads down dead ends such as whole-language reading and bilingual education, and now the whole “college courses for everyone” fiasco-in-the-making. This inspires no confidence at all that resources are being deployed intelligently.

Put everything on the table and then we’ll talk.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005 at 5:00 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin', (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.