44th?! What is Tommy Lee Talking About?
Raise Your Hand.Org made the statement through the Tommy Lee Jones commercial that Texas was ranked 44th in spending per pupil. There are many factors that go into accounting for education spending. All things considered, this number is accurate.
Professor Lori Taylor of Texas A&M University has developed a Comparable Wage Index (CWI) to take regional salary variation into account. (Education Week uses the CWI in its annual "Quality Counts" publication.) That index compares the wages of college-educated, full-time workers in non-education fields in each state. The CWI is used to measure variation in salary costs and assumes that school districts' personnel costs are affected commensurately.
Using state-level CWI data to compute adjusted 2007-08 per-pupil expenditures and corresponding rankings for Texas and the three other most populous states, Texas' per-pupil expenditure of $8,350 rises modestly to $8,484, and its ranking of 43rd drops to 47th. The rankings of the other three large states also fall, but by only three or four places. In the adjusted rankings, Vermont placed first with an adjusted per-pupil expenditure of $16,892, but Utah remained in last place with an adjusted figure of $6,523.
Capacity
A state's capacity to fund its schools can be measured by the total of its residents' personal income divided by the number of K-12 students. The National Education Association (NEA)—which represents teachers and educational support personnel—uses data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to compute this information. Texas' capacity in 2007-08 was $193,184 in personal income per student. This amount was $49,471 less than the national average.
Effort: Overall Spending
A state's effort toward supporting K-12 public education can be measured several different ways, including the amount spent on education per $1,000 in personal income, how much of the state's public funding per capita goes to education, and how much the state spends per student. These numbers each provide a different perspective and, at times, may even seem to contradict one another. For example, a wealthy state could provide a small percentage of income to education and yet its schools could still have a substantial amount to spend on students. However, if that same state had a relatively high percentage of young people, that substantial sum would be spread more thinly among its students. This article takes a look from each of these angles in an effort to piece together a more complete picture of Texas' investment in its schools.
Texas' State and Local Tax Burden Among Nation's Lowest
Texas' state and local tax burden is currently estimated at 7.9% of income (45th nationally), below the national average of 9.8%. Compared to the 1977 data, Texas had a tax burden of 7.9% (48th nationally), remaining relatively constant. Currently Texas taxpayers pay $3,197 per capita in state and local taxes.
Education Spending per $1,000 in Personal Income
Texans pay much less than the national average in taxes, and the monetary effort Texan's put toward education is about average or above: Texas' investment in 2006-07 was over $40 per $1,000 in personal income.
A note about the data: This article uses the most recent (usually, from 2007–08) comparative data available from the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
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