Education funding as a share of Utah’s economy decreased drastically between 1991 and 2007. We face some significant problems now because of that short sightedness. Utah doesn’t have enough classroom space or teachers for the waves of new students brought on by our state’s unique demographics. My kids education might suffer because of that. Pardon me if I don’t find your comments about school funding in New Jersey particularly useful.

Of course you’re right that we don’t want to be like New Jersey or Washington DC but that doesn’t mean that it is ok for Utah’s education system to fail in the face of huge upcoming waves of new students because our legislature failed to properly plan for the future.

If the funds are “just not being used the right way” we should do something about that but it would be the height of foolishness to sit back in the face of our upcoming demographic challenges and argue that we shouldn’t pay more for our education system because we might end up like New Jersey.

you throw out the “underfunded” card here and i have to ask, “what is fully funded?” is it a magic number is 10K, 15K 30K? NJ spends more than 15K per child and has one of the worst performing public school systems in the country.

to me underfunded is a useless and meaningless catch phrase public ed has used to justify growing public ed spending by 2x in real dollars over the past 30 years, and what do we have to show for it…little to no improvement. so is it really underfunded or are the funds just not being used the right way?

just a thought.

Yes…Oh so old!

We graduated in the same year. Now that our twenty-year reunion is approaching (which I no more plan to attend than any of the others which have past), are you also beginning to feel old?

I’m glad you stopped by! I hope you guys are doing well. I think you are right that it is pretty clear the education hasn’t been a huge priority for our legislators. This graph goes part of the way toward demonstrating that.

Daniel,

I agree with your point that education spending has increased. I’d be interested in seeing an inflation adjusted record of per pupil spending for the past 20 years.

You seem to have slightly misunderstood the basis of the study. It is demonstrating education spending as a portion of the whole state economy…not just government spending. Of course this only further validates your point that this study isn’t “how people think”.

Maybe they should. If education spending had been maintained at a more consistent percentage of our state’s economy we wouldn’t be faced with the teacher shortages and unpreparedness for growth our education system is currently facing.

Your object lesson was nice but I think not so helpful. Education in Utah has been underfunded for decades. Utah’s leaders had an opportunity to grow our education system as economic growth took place over the decades. They managed to keep overall government spending in line with our economy’s growth but failed when it came to Utah’s public schools.

You can defend the shortchanging of Utah’s education system all you want but you can’t change the fact that Utah is in trouble right now and our legislature’s historical neglect of public education hasn’t contributed to a solution. It is good that they are finally doing something about it but there isn’t much doubt that if they could mail their new found belief in the importance of public education back to 1992 we would all be better off now.

In one metric education spending is not up—education spending as a percentage of state government. This one, of course, is the one that the Utah Foundation focuses on. But this metric is meaningless.

The Utah Foundation argues this metric shows “priorities.” The assumption is that if the overall Utah budget increases, the education funding , transportation funding, or whatever funding should increase by the same percentage as the overall budget. That’s a step too far. People just don’t think about spending like that—in state budgeting or in their personal lives.

Here’s a hypothetical. Let say that last year I made $50,000. For my wife’s birthday I spent $100 on a present. This year, I made $150,000. Is my wife less of a priority if I only spend $250 on a birthday present? What if I spend $1000 for her birthday? Does that make her an ultra-priority?

When legislatures look at spending from year to year, they usually think like normal people. They think about nominal dollars and maybe, if they feel sophisticated, they look at real dollars. Seldom do they get out their spreadsheets and look at the state budget, over time, in real dollars, and compare percentages of each spending category.

The Utah Foundation’s methodology might show some implicit “priorities” but these priorities aren’t ones that matter because it’s not how people think. People think about nominal dollars, real dollars, and per pupil expenditures.