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I saw a TV ad last night for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, in which he claimed that education is underfunded. (Here's a link to an article quoting him saying the same thing.) Let me explain what blatant nonsense it is for him to say that.
LAUSD (the Los Angeles Unified School District) has over 710,000 students, and an annual budget that was $13.4 billion -- that's billion with a "b" -- in 2004. This translates into well over $18,000 -- per student -- per year!
When an answer was demanded, from School Board Member Julie Korenstein, as to why this astonishing amount was being spent per student per year by the LAUSD, she claimed that $11,000 per student was being spent on new school buildings. $11,000 per student is $7.8 billion. Evidently she's claiming that $7.8 billion per year is being spent each and every year on new school buildings -- because by law the LAUSD budget can never go down from one year to the next!
Angelides is working a scam. He wants the support of the Teacher's Union and he's bribing them with a promise of more money. There's no shortfall in education funding. There is a massive, absurd, overbudgeting in education funding. Clark Baker has observed that with a system of vouchers, schools would be able to chase that $18,000 per student by offering better service; Baker suggests that if vouchers were only $9,000 per student, a school with a mere 100 students would have a more-than-adequate budget of $900,000 per year.
A similar system is being used successfully in San Francisco right now.
I'd like to see an accounting of where that $18,000 per student per year is going, because I doubt that it is going to educating the kids. There appears to be a giant ripoff of the people of Los Angeles going on, on the part of the LAUSD.
#2Great comment, m!
#3On what basis do you call Angelides an "LA gubernatorial candidate"? Angelides is a native of Sacramento.
I find this characterization especially misleading in light of your laughable effort to argue that alleged overfunding of the LAUSD somehow disproves Angelides' argument that California's education is underfunded. California is not limited to L.A. (And public education in L.A. is not limited to the LAUSD.)
#4Good points, owen. I'll update the title of the post to "California Gubernatorial Candidate."
Your point that LA is not California is reasonable. But I doubt you can document your implied assertion that LAUSD can be overfunded by billions, while the rest of the California school system is underfunded.
What's even more unbelievable about that is we have teachers and school districts complaining about funding. In addition, Americans complain about our school systems when we have the money and it's not going towards the right places. Have you heard any updates on this Vik?
I have to wonder why it is that pouring more and more money into the education system here in California only makes the end product worse and worse. As far back as I can remember (25+ years), we have passed just about every education-oriented bond measure - billions and billions (as the old saying goes).
The end result has gotten so bad that we can't even risk having our high-school graduates take an exit exam - one that tests 12th graders on 10th-grade skills.
I certainly cannot in good conscience approve another dime for California's public schools.