{"id":2290,"date":"2019-06-13T18:57:31","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T18:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:02:12","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:02:12","slug":"confusion-over-student-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/06\/13\/confusion-over-student-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"Confusion Over Student Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Does anyone really know how much we spend on our public\nschools? A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/collections\/quality-counts-2019-state-finance\/map-per-pupil-spending-state-by-state.html\">state-finance\nmap on per-pupil spending<\/a> from Education Week shows Washington State, where\nwe are based, spends $11,125 per student, accounting for \u201cfactors such as\nteacher and staff salaries, classroom spending, and administration, but not\nconstruction or other capital spending.\u201d Confusing! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The frustrating issue with this report is it creates\ncontroversies about which state \u201ccould\u201d be spending more in comparison to other\nstates, which does not matter as much as the actual spending figures importantly,\nthe figure seems to <em>only<\/em> include the\nstate revenue portion (of course, this is not highlighted in the report). What is\nmissing is the significant portion of school funding from local levies, federal\nfunding, and other funding revenues. The truth of the matter is these other\nsources add thousands of additional dollars per student. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Washington Policy Center\u2019s Center for Education\nDirector, Liv Finne, there is a much more transparent and clarifying report\navailable. She recommends the Statewide Workload\/Staffing\/Finance report from\nthe Legislative Evaluation and Accountability Program (LEAP is part of the\nOffice of Financial Management), which can be found here: <a href=\"http:\/\/fiscal.wa.gov\/K12.aspx\">http:\/\/fiscal.wa.gov\/K12.aspx<\/a>. This\nresource is much more revealing, as it shows each revenue source. It is important\nto note that according to LEAP, the total expenditures in Washington State are\nactually significantly higher than the report from Education Week indicates,\naveraging a whopping $14,900 per pupil!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if the state is under-reporting revenues by $3,775, it\nraises the question: \u201cwhere does the money go?\u201d The answer to that question is\nmore important than how state education spending comparisons, which as Finne\nstates, is \u201cfallacious anyway, since every state has a different economy and\nset of conditions.\u201d &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s time to focus on the real education spending numbers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does anyone really know how much we spend on our public schools? A state-finance map on per-pupil spending from Education Week shows Washington State, where we are based, spends $11,125 per student, accounting for \u201cfactors such as teacher and staff salaries, classroom spending, and administration, but not construction or other capital spending.\u201d Confusing! The frustrating issue with this report is it creates controversies about which state \u201ccould\u201d be spending more in comparison to other states, which does not matter as much as the actual spending figures importantly, the figure seems to only include the state revenue portion (of course, this is not highlighted in the report). What is missing is the significant portion of school funding from local levies, federal<a class=\"ellipsis article-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/06\/13\/confusion-over-student-spending\/\"><span> Read More &rsaquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-policy"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2290"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}