FACT CHECK: Is Washington education spending in decline?

From the Washington Policy Institute. Please stop by and take their poll.

In a recent presentation, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, claimed that Washington’s education spending was “on the decline.” The data used to back up that claim looked at the percentage of the state economy being spent on public education funding, comparing the national average of 3.6% to Washington’s 3.1%.

Does that paint an accurate picture of the whole truth? Using those specific metrics it might be possible to say Washington’s education spending is “on the decline,” but when you start looking at the broader data, we think that claim starts to falter.

For instance, not only has the total public school revenue increased by 91% since 2010, the number of dollars spent per student has nearly doubled. Even as school populations have grown over the past decade, the public education system has been spending more per individual student, hardly constituting a decline in resources available to them. We also can see an upward trend in annual teacher pay and benefits, having increased by 37% since 2016.

There is even more data to show the continued upward trend of spending in the public education system, which can be found in Liv Finne’s recent study on the subject. Below is the full context for Superintendent Reykdal’s remarks. We’ll let you be the judge on whether claiming education spending is “on the decline” is a fair characterization.

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