Reply #204: ??? Hannah... I've got to tell you. I'm not sure that you "get" what you're looking for or debating. [View All]

[FBaggins]

I can't remember anyone saying anything about spending a majority of fed/state/local funds so I don't see how it applies. I also don't see how that could be true. Since the fed/state/local fund proportions that we've been discussing have specifically been education spending... I don't see how it could ever be anything but 100% unless you account for borrowing separately (or there are funds coming from mars)? I'd say it's a truism that every county spends 100% of the funds they spend on education... on education.

Just FYI... the fed/state/local proportion we were talking about before you jumped in was merely my initial confirmation of a back-of-the-napkin calculation. I had said that my first guesstimate of $500B was based on anecdotal evidence of average spending per student times the number of students nationally. That's just rough work because I didn't even know whether my memory of the number of students included just public schools or was all student-age kids. The confirming data point was a government report stating the amount of money spent just by localities in the reported year. I could use that as a check on my guesstimate because I had years of experience reviewing county financials in a few states that told me that the normal breakdown of fed/state/local spending was (ballpark) 10/45/45. So that gave us a second guesstimate of total k-12 education spending which was quite close to the first guesstimate.

It was after that that I found (and provided) direct census data on both actual total dollars spent AND the fed/state/local breakdown nationally and by state. Obviously the reported total dollars confirmed the prior calculations, but I also commented that the funding breakdown nationally matched my own personal experience in a few states. I never said every state was the same so looking for variations is a waste of your time. I commented that WA was unusual when you gave a different breakdown, but I was never challenging that what you said was true... just that it didn't reflect the national averages.

There's nothing there worth getting your dander up about Hannah. Nobody is claiming that all states are the same... and going state by state looking for variations is a waste of your time because there's nothing to prove (and because I've given you a table with every state already accounted for).