Editor’s note: Now through the Nov. 5 election, the Herald is examining common claims made in ballot campaigns.
Campaign: Amendment 66, an income-tax increase for public schools.
Claim: Colorado routinely ranks near the bottom of school funding, just ahead of Mississippi.
Who is saying it: This claim has been made over the years during Colorado’s battles about public schools, but the official Yes on 66 campaign has avoided making it.
While Colorado ranks below the national average in funding per student, school advocates zero in on one particular statistic because it makes the state look especially bad.
Colorado ranks near the bottom of the country in terms of school spending per $1,000 of personal income. That’s another way of examining how much a state spends on schools compared to how much money its people have.
In 2009-10, Colorado ranked 46th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in this category. During the past decade, Colorado has at times ranked 49th. The reason is a combination of Colorado’s relatively low school spending and its relatively high paychecks. (Mississippi, by the way, ranked above the U.S. average.)
A more accurate way to gauge school spending is dollars per student. Looked at this way, Colorado had been closer to the national average, but it has fallen behind since the recession hit in 2008.
In 2009-10, the Colorado schools received an average of $8,926 per student, ranking 40th out of 51, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In another version of the same statistic, the Yes on 66 campaign says Colorado spends less per student than nearby states – New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. The campaign avoids mentioning Utah and Arizona, which spend even less per student than Colorado.
Note: Because of the government shutdown, the National Center for Education Statistics website is offline. Some research in this story came from a Google cache (or backup) version of the center’s November 2012 report, which uses data from the 2009-10 school year.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
