Education Expenditures 1919 - 2006

The NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) has a table showing "Total and current expenditures per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, 1919-20 through 2006-07" in inflation-adjusted dollars. It shows that the amount spent on education has gone up from roughly $600/pupil (inflation adjusted 2007 $) in 1919 to about $10.7K in 2006. Over those 88 years it looks like a fairly even rate - no big jumps or swings after a sizable increase from 1919 to 1929.

Link:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_182.asp

Ed Spending as % of GDP

NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) has some data showing how education spending has changed as a percent of GDP from 1970 to 2007.
Link: http://nces.ed.gov/edfin/tables/tab_gdp.asp

Key points:
It has been hovering in a range of 3.2% to 4.1% and was at its highest in 2007-2008. The last year covered.

There appears no trend. It was 3.9% to 4.0% in 1970's, gradually dropped to 3.2% in mid 1980's and slowly climbed back up to 4.0% by 2001 where it has pretty much stayed.

Education funding in US over the last 50 years

How has education funding in the US done in the last 50 years. Gone up, gone down, stayed the same? It turns out that it has gone up by 3.6 times in inflation adjusted dollars. Inflation adjusted. 3.6 times. That is a lot.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

Flex Public Schools, which will open the state’s first hybrid, “bricks and clicks” schools, will be able to sidestep regulations governing non-classroom-based online schools and launch a truly innovative approach to education.

"Last Friday, the State Board of Education, acting on an appeal, unanimously approved Flex Academy San Francisco initially a 275-student high school that will open this fall in downtown San Francisco, with the goal of becoming 850 students in grades 6 to 12. (San Francisco Unified trustees, ignoring recommendations of district staff, had rejected the proposed charter without offering any reason earlier this year.) Last month, the Santa Clara Office of Education granted a county charter for Flex Academy Silicon Valley, which will open a similar school in the fall of 2011."

From "Educated Guess"

Online Charter High School for Santa Cruz and Santa Clara

Alternatives to local high schools are online charter high schools. One for Santa Cruz and Santa Clara County is Ocean Grove:

http://www.ogcs.org/index.html

Eduwonk - Good blog - pro-charter

http://www.eduwonk.com/

Changing School Board Makeup?

Most school board seats are at large - everyone votes for candidates and the top votegetters get the seats. This tends to concentrate power in the more affluent parts of the community since they have the leisure and acumen to run for the low-paying positions and the affluent are far more likely to be registered and vote. People tend to vote for those like themselves so the affluent elect the affluent. This might change with a lawsuit talked about here:

http://voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_fe0a13a2-58c1-11df-9e5f-001cc4c03286.html

This could be a sleeper. It has the potential to shake up some big districts more than any discrimination lawsuit.

Interesting Links

See Dick Schutz's comments and links here:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/16/29pd_ep.h29.html#comments

Interesting explanation of CA school financing:
http://www.rosenblatt.org/video/ca-ed-finance.html

Newsweek article
Education research gets an F.

Private schools employment
http://www.baprivateschools.com/employment.htm