We hear Kentucky recently is spending less on education once inflation is considered, but is this right?

Here’s what UK’s Dr. John Garen, who is also a member of the Bluegrass Institute Board of Scholars, has to say:

• Per-pupil funding (the total of state, local, and federal funds) rose by 80% between 1990 and 2019 after removing inflation. (Without removing inflation, it more than tripled.)

Got that? After removing effects of inflation, Kentucky’s real spending on education has risen 80%. Garen has more to say:

• Per pupil funding, after inflation, rose virtually every year over this time span except for the years following the Great Recession.

Dr. Garen illustrates his written comments with this very revealing graph.

Dr. Garen shows Kentucky’s education spending amounts in both 2018 and 2019 were the highest ever even after inflation is considered. You surely are not hearing that from the usual education folks.

Here’s another observation from Dr. Garen:

• In 2018-2019, only about one-third of K-12 funding is from local sources; 55.2% is from the state and 11.1% from the federal government.

Local school boards in Kentucky keep fussing about having to cover for supposed under-funding by the state, but this Garen finding clearly shows that on average such complaints just don’t hold up.

These Garen revelations, certain to shock Kentucky’s education folks who constantly claim they need more money, are just a few of the numerous important examples found in his new report, The Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Paper Number 36. The report, issued in December, is online at UK’s Gatton College of Business and Economics’ web site. 

Dr. Garen’s paper deals with a lot more than just education funding and is well worth your time. We will be doing more blogs about the paper, so stay tuned. Actually, every legislator in Kentucky should become familiar with Dr. Garen’s work before launching the state into more education spending for the same old system.

John Garen, Ph.D., is the BB&T Professor of Economics in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky.