Senator George Runner
Serving the 17th District which incorporates portions of the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties.

With the seemingly insurmountable budget challenges that face California government today, the many interest groups that depend on government funding are making their case to lawmakers on why they should be exempt from funding cuts. Unfortunately, due to the budget situation, the state can not be all things to all people.

As policymakers, the first programs to cut should be those that are ineffective, duplicative or inefficient. Scarce resources should not be spent on government excess or ineffective programs, especially when we face such a huge budget deficit. Before making important and far reaching decisions regarding funding, lawmakers need to have accurate information. Which brings me to the recent Education Week figures that place California at 47th in the nation in per-pupil funding? (Education Week is a teacher union friendly publication that distributes this report annually.)

The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office was concerned with the way Education Week calculated the index, and was not confident that these figures accurately reflected California’s per-pupil funding compared with other states. The information that determined how the index was calculated was not available. These figures cannot be taken at face value if the criteria used are either questionable or simply unavailable.

While all parties acknowledge the problems that face our state’s public education system, policy decisions cannot be made based on union propaganda. The LAO places California at the more realistic rank of 25th in the nation. Even accounting for cost of living expenses in California, per-pupil funding would not fall to such an exaggerated level.

Accurate and reliable information needs to be used, not sensational figures meant to grab headlines and skew public opinion, especially when dealing with such an important public policy issue as education. While principled philosophical differences abound, we should always rely on facts when making a case for change in public policy.