Is America Strangling Its Schools? FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Washington post
• Main Authors: Rasell, M Edith, Mishel, Lawrence
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, D.C WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 04.02.1990
• ISSN: 0190-8286

The claim that American education is well-funded, and that therefore poor student performance cannot be a matter of insufficient monies, is a key element in the national debate. Our recent research-which examines total U.S. education spending at the federal, state and local levels plus all private funding-shows that such assertions are misleading. In fact: U.S. public and private spending on pre-primary, primary and secondary education (the focus of national concern) is lower than in most other countries. The U.S. ties for 12th place among 16 industrialized nations, spending less than all but three. When expenditures for grades K-12 are further adjusted to reflect differences in enrollment rates, the United States falls to 14th place, spending less than all the other countries but two. When U.S. public spending alone is compared with public spending abroad, we rank 14th for all levels of schooling, 14th in spending on K-12, and 13th in K-12 spending adjusted for enrollments. If we were to increase spending for primary and secondary school up to the average level found in the other 15 countries in 1985, we would need to raise spending by some $25 billion annually. Because we spend comparatively more than other countries on higher education, when expenditures on all levels of education are calculated, we are in a three-way tie for second place among the countries studied. Meanwhile, the past decade saw proportionally more of the funding burden shift from the federal government to states and localities. From 1980-85, federal spending for K-12 (adjusted for enrollments and expressed as a share of national income), declined by 24 percent. This reduction, however, has been more than offset by increases in state and local funding, leading to a net rise in K-12 expenditures during the '80s. But despite the greater outlays, our position relative to other countries declined. Examining K-12 expenditures in 1980 and 1985 for the 16 countries, with both years' expenditures adjusted for the 1985 U.S. enrollment rate, shows that in 1980 the United States ranked 12th in adjusted spending on K-12. By 1985, we had fallen to14th. (Between 1985 and '87, public expenditures on K-12-expressed as a percentage of national income and adjusted for 1985 enrollments-rose. Since then, the level has remained relatively constant at around 4.2 percent. Because comparable international data are not available, we cannot determine how this post-1985 U.S. trend affects our relative ranking with other countries.) Paying the Price Clearly, the claim that the U.S. spends more than other nations on education is misleading. By all comparisons, we devote a smaller share of our resources to pre-primary, primary and secondary education than do most industrialized countries.