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Expenditures Complexities Last updated: Thursday - April 3, 2008 A US Census report released yesterday (April 2, 2008) showed that Arizona spent about $6500 per public K-12 student in 2006. That ranks 3rd from the bottom in the nation, leading only Utah and Idaho. Data such as these are repeatedly cited as evidence of an unwillingness of citizens of the state to support public education. I make a great deal, of course, out of Arizona's support for public education in "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips," because I believe that the state's demographics portend a like future for the nation as a whole. But I would be remiss in letting stand any quoting of Arizona's expenditures standing in support of my general argument, since I believe that the expenditures data prove nothing about the citizen's attitude toward public education. Arizona, as one of the most urban state's in the nation (i.e., percentage of population in major metropolitan centers--in this case, Phoenix and Tucson) has few cases of small schools and small classes that are economically inefficient. Whereas North Dakota to pick and example has many small rural schools with classes of a handful of students being taught by a teacher making $40,000 per year, metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Tucson have few such schools and classes. The result is that the state's per pupil expenditures are lower. Add to this the climate--not much heating of schools between September and June--and per pupil expenditure rankings look pretty uninformative. If someone wanted to test Arizona's willingness to pay for mainline K-12 education against other locales, they would be well advised to compare the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan area expenditures against those of San Antonio, Dallas, San Diego, and the like. Nonetheless I will continue to argue that the ethnic diversity of the state does give its policies a particular ugly edge which may not be accurately reflected in things like aggregate per pupil expenditures. A new study just published by a couple of political scientists demonstrates that nations with ethnic and racial diversity spend less on public services than homogeneous nations. More on this later. Send a Message to the Author RSS |
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