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Nothing undercuts the enjoyment of watching football (Go Steelers!) on a Sunday afternoon more than tiresome political ads, particularly those pro-Kay Hagan ads that employ "political sleight of hand" to substantiate claims of funding cuts to public education in North Carolina.
Given that the NFL does not schedule regular season games on Wednesdays, I figure that it is a good day to talk about those claims.
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CommenTerry
The question of whether education spending has increased or decreased is front-and-center in the race for U.S. Senate. Supporters of Kay Hagan’s campaign have bombarded the airwaves with claims that Republican candidate Thom Tillis cut $500 million from the state education budget. Tillis has objected to that claim, as one would expect, but surprisingly the mainstream media have criticized it as well. (See Quotes of the Week below.)
To try to get a more accurate picture of education spending during Tillis’s tenure as House Speaker, I worked with John Locke Foundation budget expert Sarah Curry and everything expert John Hood to track average per-pupil funding over the last five years. (John Hood’s take on these figures is available here.) We found that generating an apples-to-apples comparison was easier said than done.
While the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI) provides per-student expenditure data through 2012-13, the figures for 2013-14 have not been produced yet. Even if they were, it would offer little insight into how per pupil expenditures will fare this year. That is because N.C. DPI uses the final or end-of-year Average Daily Membership (ADM) to calculate "official" per-pupil spending figures. Obviously we are several months away from knowing Final ADM for the 2014-15 school year.
So we used the so-called "Allotted ADM" as the enrollment figure. Allotted ADM is an enrollment estimate calculated by N.C. DPI staff during the summer to determine the initial distribution of state funding to school districts. Allotted ADM is usually higher than Final ADM, but it is the only enrollment figure available for 2014-15.
Similarly, N.C. DPI has not produced school expenditure data for the 2013-14 school year and will not have 2014-15 expenditure figures for several months. For this reason, we opted to use the state’s "enacted" or initial budget — adjusted to account for reserves, lottery, and other year-to-year differences — for each of the school years under review.
Total state education funding increased by around $1 billion or 14 percent over the last four years, but that does not address the issue of inflation and enrollment changes. Any funding increase would have to take into account North Carolina’s growing student population. That is why an inflation-adjusted per-student figure is preferable.
We found that inflation-adjusted, state per-pupil funding increased by 3 percent over the last four years (See Facts and Stats below). Federal and local K-12 funding fluctuated during this period, so the total per-student funding figure may have exceeded or fallen short of this statewide average. Nevertheless, Tillis has no control over federal and local funding, so it is not directly relevant to the claims disseminated by those who are spending big money on Hagan’s behalf.
Obviously there will be some who complain that a 3 percent increase is insufficient. Perhaps it is. But it is clearly not a cut.
One last thing. Some folks suggest that it is contradictory for conservatives to speak out on the issue of K-12 education funding. After all, we often point out that most research cannot establish a significant relationship between educational expenditures and student performance. If money does not "matter," then why do conservatives talk about education funding so much?
In recent months, few public policy concerns have consistently dominated the headlines and commercial breaks more than the state’s education budget. The inconsistency between the research and the rhetoric is a good example of the way that political debates may focus on policies that arguably have little to do with the success or failure of the institution at the center of that debate.
Rather than dismiss the education funding debate as uninformed or irrelevant in light of empirical findings, public policy groups have a responsibility to address prevalent issues in an earnest and factual way. That does not mean that consensus is inevitable or even attainable. There will always be disagreements about the types of metrics used, how they are interpreted, and whether they matter. But engaging in a public policy debate does not necessarily require participants to be comfortable with the terms, assumptions, or implications of the dispute. We won’t (and never will) live in a world where only the most critical issues dominate the public discussion.
Facts and Stats
Sources: Calculations based on N.C. Department of Public Instruction and N.C. Office of State Budget and Management data and adjusted for inflation using the Gross Domestic Product: Implicit Price Deflator
Acronym of the Week
ADM — average daily membership
Quotes of the Week
"But voters should be wary of raw numbers without proper context. This is not a real budget number but one based off a baseline." [Two Pinocchios] — Washington Post, "The swarm of attack ads claiming $500 million in North Carolina education cuts," September 16, 2014
"Those are all concerns worthy of political debate, but as [North Carolina teacher and political activist Vivian] Connell says in the NEA ad, it’s best to ‘start with facts.’ And in this case, the facts are being twisted." — FactCheck.org, "Tillis: An Education Budget Backer or Hacker?" September 11, 2014
"Still, the $500 million figure is being deployed with some political sleight of hand that makes it hard for viewers to understand. This claim gets a yellow light." — WRAL, "Fact Check: A $500 million education cut that isn’t quite what it seems," September 1, 2014
"An ad attacking Tillis said he ‘cut almost $500 million from education.’ Literally, the ad is wrong. As North Carolina’s Speaker of the House, Tillis helped pass a budget in 2013 that increased actual spending on education in comparison to previous years. … We rate this claim Half True." — PolitiFact, "Did Republican Senate candidate Tillis cut $500 million from the North Carolina education budget?" July 19, 2014
Click here for the Education Update archive.
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