Over the course of the next four months, proponents of the billion dollar tax hike on the ballot this November will continually suggest Colorado is 49th in education spending.
It’s falser than your grandma’s teeth.
But you don’t have to trust us.
Just read the annual report on education spending by the National Education Association (NEA), whose Colorado affiliate is bankrolling the tax hike campaign.
The largest donor to the tax hike campaign so far is the Colorado Education Association (CEA), to the tune of $250,000. But the CEA’s national organization, the NEA, found that Colorado is 26th in “Current Expenditures for Public K-12 Schools Per Student for 2011-2012” in their latest report.
Hopefully reporters will ask the tax hike campaign proponents why their propaganda directly contradicts their own funder’s report.
What this table fails to address are the increased costs associated with K-12 education in states like Colorado. There is a disproportionately high cost for transportation and supply of rural school districts, for example. Other costs in this vein drive the cost per student up.
Therefore, raw cost per student is misleading.
So, 26th in spending is good? My wife is a teacher and has taken a 9% pay cut in the last 6 years. Add to that reduced benefits, higher health care costs, and the result is she makes 16% less then she did 6 years ago. I am voting for it!!!!!
Lynn, the figures cited in the link is from the 2011-12 school year, the most recent data available. The "defunding of education" has been exaggerated and taken out of long-term context. Did you know that from 1970 to 2008 CO increased per pupil spending by 140% above inflation? The figure reported above is greater than per-pupil spending in 2008.
Money doesn't equal education. We home schooled our kids for much less per capita than public systems. Get education out of the hands of govt. govt can set standards, private companies can do the education. Dave 🙂
Do you really think that poor performance falls entirely on the teachers? I have many teachers in my family and they work hard (even coming in on weekends and during the summer) for those kids. However, they can only do so much. If there are no educational expectations at home or the parents are not involved then the kids will not do well. It's a very simple concept. Instead of demonizing individuals it might be more helpful to understand why kids don't perform. Parents hold way more influence on the performance of their children than the teachers do.
Learning to deal with the necessities of life shouldn't be a child's job. It's darned hard to concentrate on learning to read with hunger pangs. An educated population doesn't happen without public support and some concern about living conditions generally among the population. Defunding education will not help drive any economy. It's possible the unions have the right idea since education has lost significant ground over the past 30 years. It's time to reverse course.
Anything more recent than 2007? That was before the 2008 crash and lots more defunding of education, increases in poverty and other financial devastation from Wall Street's mess.
http://www.ajtt.org/NAEP%20correlation.pdf
It would be nice to see this side by side with school achievement rankings by state.
So glad to see someone else bring attention to this duplicity….
hard to be #1 while funding and subsidising illegal aliens as well!
Why would we be embarrassed to not be throwing the most money at anything? In a pool of 50, someone has to be at the top and someone at the bottom. This whole notion of ranking education spending without correlating results means nothing. Let's look at bang for the bucks and see who is really getting their money's worth. I say Colorado is far ahead of many other states.
Considering these people are the very source of remedial programs (due to their poor performance) does it surprise anyone they either lie or can't keep their numbers straight?
shouldn't we be embarrassed that we're not first. An educated population drives an economy forward because these students (young or old) learn to do things better while they deal with the necessities of life.