Do Kids From Low-Income Communities Receive Less Per-Pupil Funding?

Progressives like to claim that kids from low income communities get the short end of the funding stick for schools when compared to kids from higher income areas. Is that accurate? No, as discussed in my Carolina Journal Radio interview with Terry Stoops, JLF Director of Education Studies. Read for yourself.

Martinez: Speaking of special populations, we often hear folks say that kids from low-income communities are getting less funding than kids who live in wealthier areas. Is that true?

Stoops: No, that’s absolutely not true. Because the state controls so much of the funding, they’re able to target their funding to counties that can’t raise a lot of revenue on the local scale. So you have some of our poorest counties receiving some of our highest per-pupil expenditures from the state because the state recognizes that there isn’t a lot of industry in the county, a small tax base, or other circumstances that make it difficult for them to raise much money for their schools.

Martinez: So, in effect, is it true then that kids from low-income communities might actually have higher per-pupil funding for education than kids from more affluent communities?

Stoops: Yes, that’s absolutely the case. Not only that, when the money comes to a school district, they usually send additional funds to schools that have a lot of free and reduced[-price] lunch or low-income kids. So even on the local level, when that money is received, they distribute those funds to the schools that need them the most.

And now you know the facts, rather than the progressive talking point.

Professor Sues UCLA For Violating His Speech Rights

Here’s what happens when you’re a UCLA professor who won’t hop on board the pro-environmental regulation train. Dr. James Enstrom is now suing UCLA. 

Enstrom’s situation has received national attention as well as statements of concern from state legislators. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) also took up Enstrom’s case and is representing Enstrom in a lawsuit filed late yesterday in Los Angeles federal court against UCLA officials and the University of California Regents. Enstrom is seeking a declaration that UCLA violated Enstrom’s free speech and due process rights, as well as an injunction requiring UCLA to rehire him.

“Because of Enstrom’s research and his whistleblowing against prominent advocates of environmental regulation in California, UCLA seemingly has decided to silence him any way it can,” said FIRE Vice President of Programs Adam Kissel. “If there is anywhere we need honest scientists who aren’t on a mission to exclude whistleblowers and skeptics, it is the American university.”

Bureaucratic Incompetence. Again.

We taxpayers have spent more than $100 million since 2008 on a program that is supposed to detect Medicaid fraud — estimated at $60 billion a year. But guess what? Bureaucratic bungling  has – yet again – turned the program into nothing more than busy work for federal bureaucrats.

The National Medicaid Audit Program used incomplete federal data to conduct 1,550 audits, and apparently because of that, the majority of the audits failed to find any fraud, the GAO said at a Senate hearing.

Yet fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government’s health insurance programs for elderly, disabled and low-income Americans, continues to cost taxpayers an estimated $60 billion a year, the Justice Department says.

Despite this example, and many others, the mantra from the Left continues to be that we must spend more money on programs, we must raise taxes, we must expand government’s intrusive tentacles.

Bologna. We must limit government, we must cut spending, we must fire incompetent taxpayer-funded employees.