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Ghost-ly statistics on education

By Christopher J. Derry

Persistent supporters of Kentucky’s faltering public-education system always seem to be on the prowl for statistics to support their lament that “our children would be better educated if we just had more money.” Such mythical journeys can easily be derailed by “ghost statistics” – well-intended numbers that just don’t exist.

If more education spending really yielded better results, then the $13,331 spent by the Washington, D.C. school district on each of its children would graduate the best students in the nation. Sadly, that school system’s dropout rates are way above average.

Nevertheless, supporters of education spending in Kentucky are already hungrily seeking morsels in Frankfort that could emerge from the 2007-08 budget debate – even though official wallowing at that legislative trough won’t start until January.

To justify their case for more education funding, special-interest groups and the politicians who kowtow to them even seem willing to employ apparitions to make their case.

A recent article in the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that: “Kentucky ranks last in the nation in education spending in two categories – the amount spent per capita and as a share of personal income.” The source of these truly shocking statistics, which were also reported by other media outlets across the state, was Governing magazine’s State and Local Source Book 2005.

Total education spending in Kentucky already consumes nearly two out of every three dollars that taxpayers send to Frankfort. Therefore, the publication’s claim that the state is on the bottom rung in two spending categories was guaranteed to stimulate serious – if predictable – tongue wagging.

“It shows we're being outpaced,” bemoaned Bob Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

“This is something that follows the trend that we've seen on the state level,” lamented Lisa Gross at the Kentucky Department of Education.

“More funding is needed for education,” cried Frances Steenbergen, president of the Kentucky Education Association.

“It’s easy to be for education, but are you willing to raise the revenue for education?” asked Rep. Jon Draud, R-Edgewood, who told reporters that he wants to restart the twice-rejected gambling-dollars-for-education campaign.

There’s just one problem with Governing magazine’s new 50th-place rankings for Kentucky that generated this chorus of banshees howling for blood. The statistics are figments of the imagination – a classic “apples-to-oranges” mistake.

The magazine’s researchers grabbed the wrong data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, the magazine has been pulling data from the wrong Census categories for years.

When compared with U.S. Census Bureau’s carefully crafted tables that perform an “apples-to-apples” comparison, the Bluegrass State isn’t dead last in any of the key education indicators. We generally place at least 10 spots off the bottom. In a number of statistics, we do even better.

For example, Kentucky ranks 29th in the nation when it comes to current education spending as a proportion of personal income. This means that despite very low personal incomes – Kentucky ranks 42nd in the nation – the commonwealth actually does a relatively good job of funding education.

The Census reveals that our education spending outranks our personal-income levels in virtually every meaningful category. Check tables 11 and 12 in "Public Education Finances 2002" and “Public Education Finances 2003" on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Web site. Dead last? No way!

Education boosters fell head over heels for an obscure magazine’s bad data because their common agendas directly benefit if taxpayers are forced to pay for more education spending.

When surprising statistics emerge, questions should always follow. If Coach Rick Pitino announces the best recruiting class in the history of basketball at the University of Louisville, he will get a ton of questions. However, both the data published by Governing magazine and the tired conclusions spewed forth by education bureaucrats that Kentucky does not spend enough on education have gone largely unchallenged.

Mark Twain once quipped that, “Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post – more for support than enlightenment.”

Instead of trumpeting Governing magazine’s phantom statistics, our education establishment should be working to better spend the rather considerable amount of money they already receive. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that our state’s children are not getting the education they need.

It would, for example, be wonderful if policymakers and education officials were as passionate about closing the huge and still-growing achievement gap between black and white students in the Jefferson County Public Schools as they are about getting into taxpayers’ wallets; or if they persisted in demanding improvements in a testing system that fails to account for most of Kentucky’s learning-disabled children.

Information pointing to the failure of Kentucky’s public-education system to prepare our kids for the challenges of the future is credible and repeatedly confirmed. Erroneous claims that the state is not spending enough on its schools are neither.

– Christopher J. Derry is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.

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