Speed Gibson

A certain Public School Superintendent perhaps imprudently referenced the latest education post up at Minnesota 2020: School Districts Falling Further Behind Financially. Minnesota 2020 is an admittedly progressive (i.e. liberal), unadmittedly political (viz. DFL) think tank.

It's a very professional, polished post, showing a disconsolate student and featuring some effective graphs splashed with red. It claims that school funding has not kept pace with inflation:

It's a number that should make Minnesotans cringe: four out of five Minnesota school districts have dropped in real per-pupil revenue since 2003. That means 80% of our schools are trying to do more with less but it's not working. Our schools are falling behind.

But look further, emphasis mine.

These findings are based on actual and projected revenue and pupil count data from the Minnesota Department of Education adjusted for inflation in government purchases.

See that? The government gets its own inflation rate, obviously a higher one than the Conssumer Price Index. This use of an inflated inflator appears to be a critical premise of this story, for the post goes on to say:

Of course, anti-tax ideologues will continue to claim that real per pupil school revenues are increasing. However, repeating a falsehood will not make it true. Claims regarding growing school revenues are generally based on incomplete measures of revenue, inappropriate inflation adjustments, or both. Based on the most inclusive measures of school revenue available and taking into account the real rate of inflation in government purchases, there is no doubt that school revenues have been falling during the era of "no new taxes."

This political outburst appears out of place in this otherwise well written post, again unscoring the need to use their inflation measure, one that tacitly accepts government inefficiency rather than force harder choices.

I think King Banian at SCSU would agree that there is no one perfect measure of inflation. But if we as a society are going to use such numbers, we have to settle on one, and clearly, empirically, that one should be the Consumer Price Index. We can't have one for Education, another for Health Care, still another for Agriculture and so on because utlimately they will devolve into serving their special situations.

That doesn't preclude the school districts from expanding their argument after applying the CPI, citing unusual factors like the fact that education can be disproportionately labor intensive. That is the approach Minnesota 2020 should have taken.