SRN Just the Facts: Education Statistics

On average, the U.S. spends $6,168 per student in public schools, according to the latest official data from the U.S. Department of Education, which are for the school year 1997-98. Even those data involve the use of a preliminary estimate of $285.5 billion for the educational expenditures for 1997-98, according to the current issue of Digest of Education Statistics: 1999 issued by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

While these official figures frequently are cited in education policy discussions, the data have two serious limitations:

• The data already are more than two years out-of-date; and

• Using expenditures, rather than total public school revenues, significantly understates the level of tax dollars committed to support public education.

For example, the U.S. Department of Education’s preliminary estimate of total revenues for public elementary and secondary public schools in the U.S. for 1997-98 is $326.0 billion–14 percent higher than reported as the expenditures on public education for the same year. The difference between the two figures is largely accounted for by capital expenditures and debt service, which are not included in the so-called “current expenditures” figure reported for public school spending. Total public school revenues is a better measure of the tax dollars appropriated for public education than the current expenditures figure.

NCES’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement does address the issue of out-of-date data, and in May of last year it published Early Estimates of Public Elementary and Secondary Education Statistics: School Year 1999-2000. These early estimates showed that for the 1999-2000 school year, public school revenues increased 5.2 percent over 1998-99 to a record $354.4 billion, or an average of $7,577 for every student in public schools. The reporting gap between public school expenditures and public school revenues widened to 15 percent, with current expenditures for 1999-2000 reported at $308.0 billion–less than the revenues reported two years earlier.

NCES revenue estimates by state for K-12 public education for 1999-2000–on a total dollar basis and on a per-pupil basis–are shown in the table below. Only five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Utah) show per-pupil revenues less than $6,000 per student, while three (Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York) show per-pupil revenues that exceed $10,000 per student.