Getting What We Pay For

Because I lived in Los Angeles for most of the last forty years of the Twentieth Century, I still read the L.A. Times every day, though now on the net. There was a period when it was a terrific newspaper, but I wouldn’t describe it that way now. However, I read it, and was surprised to see the other day that California has now sunk to the #46 position in per capita student spending for public education. When I moved there, the schools were terrific, from K all the way through University, and famous across the country for being good. Part of what made them good was the state was willing to spend money on teachers. I don’t think it was #46 in those days. At #46, it must now be competing favorably with Alabama and Mississippi, I thought.

So I poked around a little to see what the status of public education (K-12) funding is nowadays. It’s pretty dismal, it turns out. At the top of the list in recent years are New York ($14,000/student), New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. It is my guess that none of those three states is regularly congratulated for how wonderful their public schools are, despite their high spending levels. The bottom of the list is firmly anchored year after year by the great state of Utah ($5,463/student), with Arizona a solid #49 ($6,232/student). And lurking there at the bottom with them (in addition to California) is the beloved state of Washington, #45, with the princely sum of $7,432/student. You couldn’t hire a baby sitter for that price.

California and Washington have achieved their dismal funding levels by similar means. Back in the 1960’s, Californians passed something called Proposition 13, which effectively froze property taxes on real estate as long as you didn’t sell it. Your house could have appreciated from a $25K bungalow to a $500K bungalow, but as long as you were living in it, the assessor thought it was a $25K bungalow (although a very small annual percentage increase was allowed). That simply crippled education because it crippled the source of education funding. Washington hasn’t (yet) followed that dim-witted act, but the absence of a state income tax is just as bad. I know, I know…they are always trying to take away YOUR money (Thief! Robbery!) to pay for your children’s education when it would be so much more sensible if the children just paid for it themselves.

Taxes: The Admission Price We Pay for Living in a Civilized Society. Of course, if we refuse to pay them (Tim Eyman and friends, are you listening?), then we will have the privilege of living in an uncivilized society. I can hardly wait.

Money alone won’t make for better schools, of course, but inadequate funding definitely will make for worse schools. And if the state I was living in was #45 in spending, I wouldn’t be feeling too confident about the kind of education that was on offer. But then, think of it this way: the average school child’s education costs us in Washington about $2,800 dollars less than the average social security check for the post 65-year-olds among us, so it’s kind of a bargain. Not only that, but we spend each year $1,000/person more on the average school child’s education in Washington than we do on the average person’s healthcare. Of course, the average school child is involved in that education a significant percentage of the time, which is not true of the average patient’s receipt of health care (a very occasional thing except for a very small number of people).

We’re happy to pay for those social security checks because it shows how we respect the elders among us; we’re happy to pay for that healthcare because it shows our concern for the sick among us. How come we’re not so happy to pay to educate the nation’s children? Is it just because we probably will get old and we definitely might become sick, but we absolutely will never go to a public elementary or secondary school again? So…what’s it to us?

Numbers to keep in mind for scale and to understand our priorities:
U.S. average per pupil spending for public education $8,700/year (Washington: $7,432)
U.S. average social security check: $11,500/year
U.S. average per capita spending on healthcare: $6,401