9/22/05
OKLAHOMA STUDY: ACTUAL COST OF EDUCATION
MAY BE CLOSE TO DOUBLE WHAT'S REPORTED
Are education officials acting like Enron and WorldCom
accountants by reporting to the public cost-per-pupil figures that they know
are less than half as much as the real total cost?
That's not for me to say. But dang it, if it's true, it's
terrible. We would be making all kinds of public-policy decisions based on
misrepresentations of what those decisions really cost.
According to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs,
per-pupil expenditures in their state were reported by state government for
Fiscal Year 2003 as $6,429. But if you used accounting principles from the
world of business that would be used on a regular financial statement, that
figure should be $11,250.
Besides the operating fund, there's the building fund the
bond fund, the activity fund, pension subsidies, pension debt service, other
dedicated revenues that bypass the appropriations process, career tech funded
by other state agencies, and so forth.
On top of that, the study didn't even count, but said it
could have, education functions covered by other units of government such as
juvenile justice agencies, the overhead costs of state government for
regulating education, Medicaid reimbursement, costs of tuition borne by
parents, the financial value of donations to school districts, and so on and so
forth.
The full OCPA report is available here http://www.ocpathink.org/PolicyAnalysis/EdinOKtrc.pdf
and it's a wowser.
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9/22/05
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