Kudos to Adam Schaeffer, education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, for exposing a lie perpetrated on taxpayers by the Los Angeles Unified School District. LAUSD claims to spend about $10,000 for each of its nearly 700,000 students. However, that $10,000 figure omits a few things like the cost of building schools, interest on various payments, etc. When all the withheld expenses are added in, the spending figure comes to a whopping $29,780 per student per year.

Writer John Seiler decided to take matters one step further and contacted LAUSD. He talked to district spokesperson Lydia Ramos who told Mr. Seiler, “You’re using a methodology that only you are using…. No, that’s not accurate. That’s not what we’re doing. I’m going to have to let you go. This is an issue to take up with the state, or your local district, to see what they are doing.” (Not counting these capital costs is like not reporting part of your income to the IRS and telling them that, according to your methodology, you don’t have to.)

And therein lies one of the problems – there is no uniform reporting. Districts put out numbers that suit their needs. Hence, one must ask a lot of questions before an honest comparison can be made between two or more districts. Oh and something else – an “X factor” not included in education spending are teacher pension overruns which are spiraling out of control and will add to the total cost.

If nothing else, I hope Mr. Schaeffer’s research once and for all will silence the educrats and the teachers’ unions. Their ongoing “we need to spend more on education” mantra has been exposed as nothing more than the shibboleth that it is. Clearly spending gobs of cash on education really isn’t going to solve any problems. Mr. Seiler ends his article with, “For its $29,780 spent per student, LAUSD’s graduation rate is 40.6 percent, second worst in the country.”

In an op-ed published yesterday in the Orange County Register, I proposed a very simple way for school districts to save a chunk of money very quickly. If we let the bottom 10% of teachers go and raised class sizes slightly, we would have superior teaching staffs and save millions at the same time. Many businesses do this periodically; it keeps their bottom line in good shape and their workers on their toes. It’s not rocket science. But just watch - our bureaucracy-bloated school districts and the teachers’ unions will do everything they can to maintain the failing status quo.