Monday, January 11, 2010

Chart of the day

In the wake of our Governor’s bizarre proposal for constitutional amendment that would require the state to spend more on higher education than it does on prisons every year, we present the chart below.

(click on image to enlarge)




Uh, yeah. Spending doesn’t seem to be the problem as spending and staffing (though we’re not sure that is accounting strictly for teachers or admin. as well) have risen dramatically over the past 40 years while scores have flat-lined, or looking at it optimistically, the scores have stabilized.

No… with prison populations rising, there might just be something else afoot here.

We’ll let our favorite scold, KT, explain things here.

P.S. As you will note, the graph is for high school seniors, which will account for the quality of education in grade, middle and high school. That is why the Governor's proposal for college/university level education is so non-sensical.

3 comments:

K T Cat said...

Thanks for the link and the title!

Road Dawg said...

Keeping the thugs in prison is the reason crime is down. All of the beard scratching pundits don't know why crime is down with the economy, "it's not supposed to be that way, poor economy leads to crime" WRONG! Strong commitment to 3 strikes law is the reason crime is down.

Very nice scolding by Mr. Kat at the link too.

Gazitch said...

I am willing to bet that most of that spending increase comes from bloated admin and lame IT spending.