Thursday, May 23, 2013

And because I know that you still haven't had enough school finance...

...here's a chart that I suspect we'd rather not be quite this far down on:
(Source: US Census)
Sorry, I realize that Arkansas is being cut off a bit on the right margin. Click the chart to see it all.
That's from today's WBUR report "Census Data Suggests Mass Punching Below its Weight on Education Spending." Per $1000 of personal income, Massachusetts ranks 32 out of the 50 states in spending on education; essentially, this is a measure of what the state is spending versus what it (presumably) can afford.
One does have to be careful with this sort of comparison--what $1000 gets you in different parts of the country is very different, for example, and Massachusetts largely supports education from state and local funds (not federal ones)--but it is an interesting way of thinking of education spending.

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