National Per Student Public School Spending Nears $9,000

The United States spent an average of $8,701 per pupil to educate its children in 2005, the Census Bureau said Thursday, with some states paying more than twice as much per student as others.

New York was the biggest spender on education, at $14,119 per student, with New Jersey second at $13,800 and Washington, D.C., third at $12,979, the Census Bureau said. Seven of the top 10 education spenders were Northeastern states.

The states with the lowest spending were Utah, at $5,257 per pupil, Arizona $6,261, Idaho $6,283, Mississippi $6,575, Oklahoma $6,613, Arizona $7,817, and Kentucky $8,066. The 10 states with the lowest education spending were in the West or South.

Overall the United States spent an average of $8,701 per student on elementary and secondary education in 2005, up 5 percent from $8,287 the previous year, the bureau said.

Funding is largely a state and local responsibility under the U.S. system, with 47 percent coming from state governments, 43.9 percent from local sources and only 9.1 percent from the federal government.

Students in northeastern and northern states tend to perform better on standardized tests than students in southern and southwestern states. But experts say the correlation between spending and testing performance is not strong.

This from CNN.
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The Rankings - Read 'em and weep

From Table 11: States Ranked According to per pupil Elementary-Secondary Public School System Finance Amounts: 2004-2005

US.......... 10,159
1 DC.......... 17,809
2 NJ.......... 16,213
3 NY.......... 15,791
4 CT.......... 13,890
5 MA.......... 13,474
6 WY.......... 13,434
7 VT.......... 13,298
8 HI.......... 12,415
9 RI.......... 12,329
10 DE.......... 12,255
11 PA.......... 12,208
12 AK.......... 12,064
13 MD.......... 11,466
14 ME.......... 11,259
15 IN.......... 11,226
16 NH.......... 11,085
17 WI.......... 10,997
18 OH.......... 10,884
19 MI.......... 10,486
20 MN.......... 10,360
21 IL.......... 10,101
22 VA.......... 9,956
23 NE.......... 9,916
24 WV.......... 9,637
25 CA.......... 9,582
26 GA.......... 9,479
27 IA.......... 9,324
28 ND.......... 9,210
29 MO.......... 9,154
30 NM.......... 9,146
31 OR.......... 9,035
32 SC.......... 9,023
33 KS.......... 9,013
34 CO.......... 8,958
35 WA.......... 8,941
36 FL.......... 8,775
37 MT.......... 8,772
38 TX.......... 8,686
39 AR.......... 8,587
40 NV.......... 8,438
41 SD.......... 8,409
42 LA.......... 8,322
43 NC.......... 8,162
44 AL.......... 8,073
45 KY.......... 8,066
46 AZ.......... 7,817
47 OK.......... 7,775
48 MS.......... 7,349
49 TN.......... 7,202
50 ID.......... 7,074
51 UT.......... 6,510

Note: Payments made by the state government into the state teachers' retirement system and for health and life insurance on behalf of Kentucky school systems are included in the tables.

Also note: Two of the entries are different enough to be considered outliers. Washington D C is a unique entity being a city, rather than a state, to which it is being compared. Hawaii is a state system.

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45th ...Lovely.

But these are total revenue figures. Cost of living differences and other factors explain some of the differences in state effort - apart from any political decisions made in a given state. We should probably look closer at the revenue streams that make up this total to better understand the relative impact of of each: Federal, State and Local.

Here's the News: In Kentucky's case, the STATE per-pupil contribution ($4,626) ranks a respectable 24th. The FEDERAL per-pupil contribution ($958) is even better, ranked 20th. It is the LOCAL per-pupil contribution ($2,483) that is lacking, and there Kentucky ranks 44th - contributing less than half the amount from local sources than our neighbors, in Ohio ($5,415), Indiana ($5,378) and Illinois ($5, 775).

House Bill 44 at work

This circumstance is directly related to the passage of House Bill 44 in the infamous special session of 1979. House Bill 44 effectively capped local increases to 4%.

It's kinda complex, but (with light editing)AP Reporter, Marc Chellgren described it this way:

Generally, a piece of property, such as a house and lot, is assigned a value based on the estimate of what it would bring if it was sold. Taxing entities, from state government to a school board, then apply a tax rate to the value of each piece of property individually. The rate is generally defined as an amount, say 25 cents, for each $100 of assessed value.

Under the provisions of HB 44, receipts from property taxes are generally restricted to an increase of 4 percent each year. But there are gray areas and exceptions.

Local governments can raise more than 4 percent from property taxes each year, but the rate is then subject to a referendum of the voters. And the way the value of property is calculated each year for local districts excludes “new” property, such as a new building.

The state calculation of the total value of property, however, must include the value of new property. The effect is that the overall state tax rate has declined each year because the value of property has increased and the 4 percent cap is in effect. Thus, the tax rate that was 27.9 cents per $100 of assessed value in 1979 had fallen to 13.6 cents by 2001.

How does House Bill 44 impact a school district?

A very good description of the bill's negative impact on the Jefferson County schools comes from a Courier-Journal Op-Ed that ran last August 30th called "Bad Math for Schools."

Why is House Bill 44 considered so infamous, by those who care about good government? Just look at how it kept the Jefferson County school board from
raising the huge sums required just to meet state and federal demands.

This near-mythic piece of bad legislation prevents local government from raising more than 4 percent in new money without submitting the increase to more-or-less-certain rejection in a referendum.

Your school board did as much as it could this year, setting rates at the highest level allowed. But that actually amounted to a reduction, from 62.5 cents per $100 of assessed value to 61.5 cents. You'll pay $10 less per year on a $100,000 home.Even so, thanks to higher property values and local development, the rate will produce an additional $4.8 million for JCPS to spend in 2006-07. To which you say, "Great!"

Not so fast.

Funding formulas adopted with the Kentucky Education Reform Act have massively disadvantaged this city's schools. Unfunded mandates from Frankfort and Washington have added hugely to the problem.

It costs more than $33 million to transport kids the way JCPS must do it, but state support leaves the district almost $17 million short.It costs $6.4 million to educate kids housed in state institutions in Jefferson County, but the state contribution shorts the district by $1.7 million.Giving special help to those for whom English is a second language? It's required, and it should be, but it costs the district $4.9 million more than the feds and Frankfort provide.

Preschool? JCPS has to chip in an extra $12.5 million. Special help for homeless kids? An additional $449,000. Vocational education? Another $3.3 million. Technology? An additional $1.5 million.

The General Assembly loves to hand out raises to school employees, but won't pay for them. That alone is a $24 million problem for JCPS over two years.And who can be against spending the money on special education that's been mandated, but not supplied? That's another $30.5 million in local tax money the district must spend.

Everybody wants better trained teachers, so more professional development has been ordered up. But it's under-funded, by $3.2 million.

To paraphrase a famous witticism, "A million here, a million there, and it begins to add up to real money." In this instance, more than $100 million. And every dollar spent on unfunded mandates is a dollar not spent on a long list of other needs.

It's not great. It is, in fact, a shame.

Funding formulas, the tax cap and unfunded mandates "have massively disadvantaged this city's schools."

SOURCE: Newsbank

Edition: metroSection: ForumPage: 12A
Dateline: Jefferson County, Kentucky
Copyright (c) The Courier-Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Record Number: lou33769597

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Also notable is a reponse from retiring Beechwood superintendent Fred Bassett, who described the same erroding effect on the small northern Kentucky suburban school district. Bassett's "Between SEEK and HB 44, schools actually lose money" ran in the Courier-Journal September 3rd 2006.

In regard to the editorial about the effect of House Bill 44 on Jefferson County school district funding ("Bad math for schools," Aug. 30), an important point was not mentioned.

Just as Jefferson County's school district experienced an increase in property assessments of more than 4 percent this year, so did Beechwood Independent School District in Fort Mitchell. And just as Jefferson County's tax rate actually went down to produce the maximum 4 percent increase in local revenue, so did Beechwood's.

What many taxpayers don't realize is that when this happens, the local school district actually loses money under the state's SEEK school funding formula.

This can been demonstrated by looking at Beechwood's experience over the last five years. In 2001, the Beechwood real estate property tax rate was raised 26 percent by vote of the community to a rate of 69.5 cents per $100 of assessed value.But the next year (2002), the tax rate dropped to 64.4 cents; the property in the district was reassessed and went up 12.9 percent but the district took the 4 percent increase in local tax revenue. If the tax rate had stayed at 69.5 cents, the revenue also would have increased 12.9 percent. After that, the property tax rate increased slightly each year as the board voted to take the 4 percent annual increases in revenue.

As a result, it was only last year (2005) that the rate rose above the 2001 level and reached 70.4 cents.

In 2006, because the assessed value increased by 5.5 percent and the board took the 4 percent increase in local tax revenue, the rate dropped to 70.1 cents per $100. This happened for the same reason that the rate dropped in 2002, namely, that if the rate had remained unchanged, revenue would have increased by more than 4 percent. (It would have gone up 5.5 percent.)

The critical thing to realize is that because the total assessed value of property in Beechwood went up 5.5 percent, the state funding formula (SEEK) assumes that the district is going to get 5.5 percent more in local revenue this year — and will reduce the allocation of base-level state funds to the district by that amount.In reality, though, the district will be getting only a 4 percent increase in local revenue because House Bill 44 restricts tax revenue increases to 4 percent without the increase being subject to voter approval.

Thus, the school district will lose money, even after taking a 4 percent increase in local revenue, because state funding will go down more than local funding will go up.

Obviously, if the Beechwood Board of Education had taken anything less than a 4 percent increase in local tax revenue, the district would have lost even more money, because the gap would be greater.(In fact, in 2002, the loss in funding caused by the SEEK formula was very large because the local property assessments rose by 12.9 percent and the gap between the loss in state funds and the actual 4 percent increase in local funds was considerable.)

Clearly, something is wrong with the SEEK school funding formula, and it needs to be fixed.

FRED BASSETT

Superintendent, Beechwood Independent School District

Fort Mitchell, Ky. 41017

SOURCE: NEWSBANK

Edition: METROSection: ForumPage: 2H
Dateline: louisville, ky
Copyright (c) The Courier-Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Record Number: lou33998451

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Bassett is correct. Something's wrong.

When the General Assembly rewrote the laws governing Kentucky's public schools in 1990, they left House Bill 44 in place. We can plainly see its fingerprints on our national rankings.

But we're a poor state!

True. So let's look at how Kentucky stands when spending is compared to Personal Income.

Here again we see the same story. When adjusted for income, Kentucky's rankings improve. Overall, Kentucky ranks 30th; the state contribution ranks 12th, the federal contribution rnaks 13th and the local contribution - adjusted for personal income - ranks 41st!

So, it's the local school board's fault?

Not so fast.

According to the state constitution responsibility for the whole school system belongs solely to the legislature. The Kentucky Supreme Court in Rose v Council for Better Education declared education a fundamental right required adequate funding. If there is a problem with that system, even if it manifests itself at the local level - it can only be fixed by the General Assembly. School boards and superintendents are unable to extricate themselves from the problem.

How do our districts look?

Well, we get to see the big ones.

KENTUCKY: Per Pupil Amounts for Current Spending of Public Elementary-Secondary School Systems with Enrollments of 10,000 or More

District............................Enrollment........Total per-pupil current spending

Boone County............... 16,414........ $ 6,069
Bullitt County................. 11,849........ $ 5,971
Daviess County............. 11,943 ........ $ 6,499
Fayette County.............. 35,004 ........ $ 7,766
Hardin County............... 13,832........ $ 6,764
Jefferson County........... 97,976........ $ 8,161
Kenton County.............. 12,955........ $ 6,473
Madison County............ 10,289........ $ 6,516
Oldham County............. 10,579........ $ 6,421
Pike County................... 10,390........ $ 7,424
Warren County.............. 11,983........ $ 5,923