Thursday, April 08, 2010

Money and education from Arizona

Since I'm in Arizona, this is a bit topical - Increased school spending isn’t getting to the classroom starts with:

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In 2000, Arizona was spending only 57.7 cents of every education dollar in the classroom. That fact helped persuade voters to pass Proposition 301, which boosted the state sales tax to fund classroom spending with higher teacher salaries, more instruction aids and other needs.

Ten years later, the percentage of education funds spent in the classroom has changed: it is now only 56.9 cents per dollar, third-lowest among the 50 states.

A February 2010 report by state Auditor General Debbie Davenport found that, despite the $300 million raised annually by the Prop. 301 tax increases, the percentage of education dollars spent directly in classrooms has declined for five straight years and now is at a record low. She found many school districts are diverting classroom funds to transportation, special services, and bureaucracy, which the report says is a “violation of state law.”
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There is tons of money floating through public schools, the problem isn't lack of money, but the misuse of public funds.


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Technorati tags: children, education, government schools, children, public school, public education

3 comments:

Sebastian said...

Well, a certain amount of money does have to go to support. But I think that you're right that spending almost half on support might be a bit unbalanced.

I remember reading a book that featured a comparison of a public school district and a large Catholic school system. The public district couldn't answer the question to how many administrative staff it had. The Catholic system (in a large city and serving thousands of students) answered the question by having the person on the phone count the people in the office. They had something under a dozen.

Henry Cate said...

I read awhile back that thirty or forty years ago most public schools got by with one administration person for something like 20 students. Most private schools today have similar numbers.

But today the ratio is something like one person for administration for every two students.

I love your story! That is fun.

Sebastian said...

I think that the story was either from Myron Liebermann or an old edition of Imprimis.