Can be summarized by this short passage in today's Ohio Education Gadfly:
Ohio saw per-pupil funding in the state rise by over 60 percent from 1997 to 2010, using inflation-adjusted dollars, and that spending didn't include the almost $6.5 billion spent on new school buildings over that same period of time.
What has all this new spending bought for Ohio? More jobs for adults, for starters. Though public school enrollment in the Buckeye State has slightly decreased over the past two decades (from 1.77 million in 1991 to 1.75 million in 2009), the number of adults employed by the system has shot up. According to the Ohio Department of Education, there were 181,020 public school employees working in Ohio's public education system in 1991, when the DeRolph [school finance equity] case was first filed, compared with 245,354 such public school employees on payrolls last school year. This increase of 35 percent over two decades came as enrollment dropped 1.4 percent.
Think your state is cutting education ?to the bone?? If it's anything like Ohio (and it probably is), you're kidding yourself.
-Mike Petrilli
