by David Safier
There you go again, as Ronald Reagan once said. The Goldwater Institute is once again demonstrating that nothing it says should be taken at face value. Its arguments are usually a strange concoction of facts, half facts and purposeful omissions.
And Matthew Ladner, who is a smart guy with a good, logical mind, has demonstrated once again that he only believes maybe half of what he says in his position as G.I.'s chief educational propagandist.
Ladner put out a daily email a week ago playing games with the amount Arizona spends per student to try and make it sound like we're big spenders with small results.
I debunked the article the same day, as did the Arizona Education Network.
Today, Ladner wrote another daily email tearing into the AEN's analysis of his earlier claims. (And he didn't even mention me, after all the times I've mentioned him! I'll try not to feel hurt.)
Ladner claims AEN is "throwing as much mud in the water as possible." And then he goes and ignores most of what AEN wrote which corrected Ladner's distortions, and he uses as his main point an argument that AEN didn't even mention.
Here's what AEN wrote, followed by Ladner's response.
- "In 1979 Arizona was investing about 69% of the total general fund budget on K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. Today about 57% of our state budget is devoted to our schools. We are essentially paying LESS, and demanding MORE." No direct response from Ladner. He doesn't want to go back earlier than 2000 because the earlier numbers refute his basic argument.
- "The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reported recently that Arizona actually spent more per K-12 student in 1986 than we did in 2006." Again, no response. Ladner really, really doesn't like those pre-2000 numbers.
- "[N]ational surveys report that Arizona spends anywhere between $5,255 – $7,537 per student. However, special interest groups are claiming that we spend anywhere from $9,500 to “over $10,000” per student." As an example, AEN quotes the conservative Arizona Tax Research Association's 2007 figure of about $6,200. No direct response from Ladner, who is the only one to use his ridiculously high $9,500 figure — except for AZ conservatives who live and breathe by G.I.'s talking points. I would add that the conservative ALEC doesn't use Ladner's $9,500 number, nor do the NEA or Tom Horne. All of them use a figure closer to $7,500 for our current per pupil spending.
- AEN says Ladner gets his figure from the JLBC Report which includes "lunch money, after school sports, adult night programs, adjacent ways (sewer & road repairs as a result of city maintenance), and other non-revenue dollars" which no other state includes in its figures. Ladner actually responds to this comment. In a short paragraph, he justifies the inclusion of many of these numbers in his estimate. He also throws in the cost of new school buildings as legitimate, something I debunk at length in my comments on his earlier email.
- AEN says Arizona is at or near the bottom of the states in per student spending. "Average reported difference between what Arizona spends per student and what the average US state invests = $3,068 per student." Ladner wouldn't touch this one if his life depended on it. He once had to publicly admit I was right when I said he couldn't use his $9,500 figure to put us in the middle of the states in per student spending. So he has to fall back on manipulating data to "show" we spend a lot of money.
To recap: AEN made 5 separate points to rebut Ladner's email, and Ladner kinda took issue with one of them in one short paragraph.
What is Ladner's main argument in today's email? That per student spending is up 20% from 2000, and his segue from his earlier arguments makes it sound like this is a direct refutation of AEN's comments. The problem is, never in AEN's piece does it mention the 20% figure. Instead, it goes back before Ladner's cherry-picked 2000 number and shows that we once spent more per student (and, I'll add, were somewhere in the middle of the pack in per student funding) and now, no matter how you slice and dice it, we spend less than any other state.
If Ladner responds to this post in the comments, I expect him to call me to task for saying that he makes it sound like his 20% figure is a refutation of AEN. He may quibble if he wishes. Anyone who wants can read his email and see if that's the impression he's trying to convey. And if Ladner does decide to comment, I hope he'll also take up the other 4 points AEN made that he ignored in his email, since they are, after all, the substance of what AEN wrote.