Report: Ohio School Spending Rising; Teacher Pay, Enrollment Declining

Grade School Students In Class

Ohio schools spent nearly 15% more per student in 2020 than in 2002, while enrollment, the number of teachers and teacher pay dropped.

According to a new report from the Reason Foundation released Thursday morning, the bulk of the inflation-adjusted increase covered employee benefits, specifically teacher pension debt.

The Reason Foundation’s Education Spending Across 50 States showed Ohio’s inflation-adjusted education revenue grew from $14,008 per student in 2002 to $16,064 per student in 2020. That increase keeps it well below the national average, ranking 38th in the country.

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Arizona Legislature Considering ‘Build Back Broke’ Type of Budget with Earmarks, Funding for School Social Workers, and Government Employee Pay Raises

The Arizona Legislature is rushing to pass a budget before the 2022 session ends in a few days on June 30, but some Republican legislators are balking at agreeing to vote for the 12 budget bills due to the amount of spending, $17.9 billion. State Sen. Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) tweeted on Monday, “Arizona’s version of @JoeBiden’s Build Back Broke (aka the legislature’s introduced budget) is not fiscally responsible. You cannot spend your way out of a looming recession.”

She objected to the budget adding an extra half a billion dollars. “I can’t think of anything more fiscally irresponsible than spending recklessly on member pet projects while Arizonans struggle to keep up with crushing inflation,” she tweeted. The Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona called the budget “bloated and wasteful.” 

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Demand for Gov. Ducey’s School Vouchers to Leave Arizona Schools That Mandate Masks or Require Unvaccinated Students to Quarantine Exceeds Funds

Doug Ducey

Just three weeks after Gov. Doug Ducey announced that school districts issuing mask mandates or requiring vaccinated students to quarantine would be penalized by diverting money to students to use as school vouchers to attend elsewhere, demand has exceeded the $20 million he allotted by twice the amount. Ducey announced on August 17 that money the state received from the federal government through the pandemic-generated American Rescue Plan to boost per-pupil spending would not go to any of those schools.

Ducey made the announcement immediately following a demand on August 11 from Republican state legislators to take action regarding those school districts. They suggested that Ducey could withhold federal funds and offer vouchers, which he did, but he did not go so far as following their recommendation of suing the school districts.

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Arizona Supreme Court Upholds Prop. 208, Won’t Allow It to Break Education Spending Limit

Arizona’s high court didn’t strike down a voter-approved tax increase on the wealthy, but it’s not going to let the influx of new revenue break a constitutional cap on education spending, either.

The Arizona Supreme Court remanded Fann vs. Invest in Education back to a trial court Thursday morning, saying it’s too early to say whether the ballot initiative is entirely unconstitutional.

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Analysis: Public School Funding Per Student Averages 80 Percent More Than Private Schools

According to the New York Times, one of the main reasons why public K–12 schools are reopening more slowly from Covid-19 lockdowns than private schools is because public schools generally have less money. Times reporter Claire Cain Miller makes this claim three times in a single article, but her assertion is the polar opposite of reality and has been so for decades.

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What (Other) Economists Think About Democrats’ Education Plans

by Kerry McDonald   A recent NPR article, titled “What Economists Think About Democrats’ New Education Proposals,” caught my eye. FEE, after all, is an economic education organization that looks at how free markets and individual liberty lead to more progress, greater prosperity, and better outcomes for all than any other social or economic system ever created. I was curious what these NPR-interviewed economists might say about the Democratic presidential candidates’ education plans, which involve funneling more money into a government system of mass compulsory schooling. What’s the Plan? According to the article, Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wants to spend $315 billion of taxpayer money to lift teacher salaries. Joe Biden wants to increase federal spending to low-income schools with teacher pay hikes. Bernie Sanders wants to impose price controls for teacher salaries, imposing a pay floor of $60,000 for incoming teachers. To its credit, the NPR article explains that by both domestic and international standards, American teachers are already well compensated and enjoy above-average employee benefits. But that’s not enough, according to one of the economists interviewed. Eric Hanushek of Stanford says: “I think teachers are way underpaid.” Hanushek and others argue that teachers who are able to…

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Analysis: Bernie Sanders’ Education Plan Is Rife with Deceit

by James D. Agresti   Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has unveiled a plan that he says will create “an education system that works for all people, not just the wealthy and powerful.” In it, he portrays the U.S. education system as grossly underfunded and racially biased, but the statements he makes to support these notions are misleading or explicitly false. Racial Segregation Sanders repeatedly blames the “re-segregation of our K–12 schools” for the poor academic performance of black and Latino students. He bases this claim on an article in the New York Times, which declares that “nonwhite and low-income students who attend integrated schools perform better academically,” but there is a “long history of white resistance to desegregation efforts,” and “school secession movements—in which parents seek to form their own, majority-white districts—are accelerating.” The Times article is primarily based on a report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Buried 21 pages deep in that report is the fact that “the share of intensely segregated white schools, that is, schools that enroll 90–100% white students, has declined from 38.9% in 1988 to 16% in 2016.” In plain language, “white” schools have become more integrated, which deflates the storylines…

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