Do you live in Arizona? Wonder about per-pupil spending in your school district? Want to know where your tax money goes?
A new analysis of Arizona public school financing shows average total spending for an Arizona public school student is between $8,500 and $9,000. The report, co-published by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation and the Goldwater Institute, presents information from the Arizona Department of Education’s multiple accounting systems in a clear, straightforward way that is readily accessible to parents, taxpayers, and policymakers.
The report compiles data from the Arizona Department of Education for all 218 regular Arizona public school districts to determine how much funding is tied to students when they enter the public school system or change districts, and shows fixed and variable expenditures. An accompanying online interactive database allows anyone to easily access per-student funding figures.
Sweet. Summary graf from the pro-vouchers report here:
Under Arizona’s current education finance system, the state has determined how much education funding is tied to students when they enter the public school system, when they leave it, or when they change districts within the state. However, despite attempts to equalize student funding, expenditures do not reflect the true costs of educating children. Funding is still based on the values of their parents’ homes, and in many cases the districts’ non-equalized portions of local, county, state, and federal non-equalized funding exceeds the students’ equalized base funding.
Allowing parents to control their children’s education dollars would help improve transparency, simplicity, and accountability in Arizona education finance. Most important, letting parents control their children’s education dollars arms them with the knowledge they need to make informed educational decisions and gives them the buying power to act on that information.
Posted by kswygert at January 24, 2005 06:34 PM