Mistakes were made
Last night, I linked to this chart from Positive Liberty comparing federal spending to educational achievement. As Freddie points out in comments, this is not an accurate representation of what we spend on education – a quick search of the Department of Education’s website reveals that the federal government only contributes about 8.3 percent of total educational expenditures, most of which come from state and local governments. Taken independently, the numbers on federal spending really don’t mean much. So yeah, my bad. I shouldn’t have argued that this data questions the efficacy of additional education spending.
Obviously, the debate over education is an important one to have. And I’d be interested to compare student achievement to total education spending over a similar period. But now that this chart is percolating the blogosphere – again, my bad – I think it’s important to note that it doesn’t come close to presenting a complete picture of education spending nationwide.
October 1, 2009 5 Comments
