WRAL headline at best misleading, at worst a flat-out lie
Published July 10, 2014
by Terry Stoops, The Locker Room, John Locke Foundation, July 9, 2014.
WRAL is reporting that “NC education spending on decades-long slide.” What they really mean is that education spending, as a percentage of the total state budget, has decreased due to the demands of Medicaid and various other state-funded enterprises.
Indeed, there is a big difference between a decrease in spending (stated in the headline) and a decrease as a percent of North Carolina’s General Fund appropriations (addressed in the article). Apparently, that critical distinction does not bother the folks at WRAL, which is owned by an incredibly wealthy benefactor of liberal organizations and causes, Jim Goodmon.
Was there a slide in state education spending? Nope. Not even close. If you really want to know what happened to state education spending over the last decade, take a look at the chart below, which was published by the NC Department of Public Instruction earlier this year.
The only decrease occurred in the twilight of Democratic rule. Since the election of a Republican legislative majority in 2010, state education spending has increased.
July 10, 2014 at 9:05 am
Richard Bunce says:
... and that does not include Federal and Local government funding.
July 11, 2014 at 9:38 am
Bill Worley says:
As indicated in my comments, those numbers were only numbers from the State budget. Since the article referred ONLY to state budget numbers, I did the same.
July 12, 2014 at 11:24 am
Richard Bunce says:
Total school system funding from all sources divided by total student population. Anything else is nonsense.
July 10, 2014 at 9:46 am
Bill Worley says:
Let's see who's really being misleading...
Taking this data, and state budget data from OSBM, you can easily see that education spending accounted for 24.7% of the State budget in 1999-2000, and that percentage has declined every year since. The percentage for education spending in 2012-2013 budget is 14.9%. The writer should know very well that percentages are comparable things, while absolute dollars are not.
Some further data observations...Enrollment in public schools in North Carolina has grown from 1.282 million in 2000 to 1.492 million in 2012. That is a 16.4% increase in student enrollment. If you look at raw budget dollars for education, in 2000 the budget was 5.74 billion, and in 2012 was 7.74 billion. That is a 51.2% increase in education budget. However, we all know 2000 dollars are not equivalent to 2012 dollars in spending power, due mostly to inflation. Using the government calculator, 7.74 billion for 2012 would be equivalent to 5.77 billion in 2000. Using equivalent dollars, education spending has increased by a whopping 0.5% (that's one half of one percent) from 2000 to 2012, while enrollment has increased 16.4%.
One more. Per pupil spending in 2000, based on total education budget dollars divided by student enrollment (clearly this is state level spending only), was $4477 per student. The same numbers for 2012 would be $5187. But again, those 2012 dollars are not the same as 2000 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, the 2012 number is $3868 per student, and that reflects a 13.6% DROP in per pupil spending in the state budget from 2000 to 2012.
July 10, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Betty McGuire says:
His figures are wrong because he did not factor in inflation for the last several years.
July 10, 2014 at 7:05 pm
Vicki Boyer says:
Per pupil spending is down.
July 10, 2014 at 11:48 pm
Richard Bunce says:
Is that all NC K-12 dollars from Federal, State, and Local governments divided by the total number of students or is that just the State dollars allocated per student that does not include Federal and Local dollars and the State allocations to School districts not based on student enrollment?
