Demand Transparency in Education Spending

In most states, education is the most expensive item in the budget. However, there is frequently some question on exactly how much is being spent and on what. The Cato Institute dug in to see what they could find out about transparency in educational spending around America.

In Cato’s new report Cracking the Books: How Well do State Education Departments Report Public School Spending?, they take a look at just that issue of transparency. The transparency of different states was scored by four criteria: per pupil expenditures, total expenditure, average salary, and public accessibility. States were assigned a certain number of points in each category, and total number of points corresponded to a letter grade.

In case you were wondering, it’s not looking good out there, folks. Only one state, New Mexico, scored an A, and only eighteen states scored a C or higher. Ten scored an F-, with an additional eight coming in with an F. That means that most states in our union stink at reporting public education spending. When a government operates behind closed doors like this, how are voters and taxpayers supposed to make informed decisions? Wasn’t this supposed to be the most transparent administration in history?

In Obama’s America, the government seems to think that they know best and that the people don’t really need to know much of anything. They seem to have forgotten that they work for us, and that we expect timely and accurate reporting. Let’s stop accepting this and remind them who is in charge.

We have a special kind of power in this country of ours. That is the power to boot officials out of the government. We don’t have to accept this behind-the-scenes form of governing. Contact your elected representatives at every level and demand more accountability.  We deserve to know where our tax dollars are going.