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And if you actually want the figures on public education spending nationwide. . . .


. . . here they are.

I'm not sure if releasing them on April Fools Day was an intentional ploy by the Department of Education or not.

At any rate, lovely page after page of wonkish stats.

For the deeply concerned, according to the Feds, the average per-pupil expenditure is $9,138 per year; Delaware spends $11,633 (8th highest in the nation).

In purely instructional costs, we're 7th, at $7,096 per pupil.

The neat thing about bureaucracy is that you can publish all these stats and have them be meaningless without knowing what you're getting in terms of student performance.

For that you have to visit the National Center for Education Statistics, which will compare our math, reading, science, and writing scores at 4th and 8th Grades against national averages on NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] tests.

And that's about what we are . . . average.

4th Grade Math DE 240/US 237
8th Grade Math DE 281/US 278
4th Grade Reading DE 226/US 217
8th Grade Reading DE 266/US 260
4th Grade Science DE 152/US 149
8th Grade Science DE 152/US 147
4th Grade Writing DE 163/US 153
8th Grade Writing DE 159/US 152

The good news is that we're at least slightly above average in all eight areas.

The bad news is that we're spending about $2,500 more per student per year than the national average, just to tread water.

On the other hand, New York, which has the highest per-pupil expenditure in the whole damn country, actually scores slightly lower than Delaware in all categories.

This is not a simple question, given that Utah--with the lowest per-pupil spending--scores almost exactly the same as New York and Delaware.

Now think about the Delaware governor's race, at least on the Democratic side.

What's intriguing is that the differences between the educational policies proposed by Jack Markell and John Carney are differences of such small nuance that at the first education debate they often gave the same answers to the questions.

This is perfectly understandable: Both men are being coached by prominent members of the current Delaware public education bureaucracy.

So there is no reason their answers would be different.

They are proposing exactly what the same Delaware education leaders who brought you average performance on an above-average budget want to do.

Don't look for any truly innovative ideas out of either candidate: the people pulling the strings when they talk about education don't have any to put in their mouths.
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