© 2024 KOSU
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

House Bill 1498 Seeks to Nail Down Oklahoma's Education Costs

okhouse.gov

Funding for Education in Oklahoma has historically been low. But depending on who you ask—the dollar amount that the state spends varies widely. As do our national rankings.

One lawmaker is fed up with the confusion and is pushing a bill through the legislature to nail it down.

If you divide 4.9 billion by 631,000, what do you get?

Oklahoma’s per pupil expenditure. Or, the amount of money the state spent on each kid’s education in 2013.

In short, that’s $7,740 according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That’s low by national standards. In fact, it puts Oklahoma at 49th out of 50 states according to the US Census Bureau.

But Representative Dennis Casey doesn’t quite trust these stats. So he’s pushing House Bill 1498 through the legislature, which, he says, would produce an accurate number for Oklahoma’s per pupil expenditure.  He’s frustrated with the various think tanks that figure it out differently.

“What happens is—it’s very difficult because one group will say we’re 49th and another will say we’re 46th and then another might say we’re 39th—whatever that number is—and you really don’t know…”

Each group does have their own way of coming up with the number. For example, the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs, a conservative think tank, said the state was spending $11,000 on each student in 2003!  That's almost $4,000 more than most current estimates.

The Executive Director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration, Steve Crawford, says its all about what's included in that formula. He agrees that there is a lot of variation floating around but says most of the government websites, and those low rankings, are legit.

"I think it's fairly accurate when you do the state to state comparisons. Exactly accurate-- maybe not, but i think its a fair representation of what states do and how much effort they put behind funding their schools, but everybody’s a little bit different."

Regardless, Casey wants to set the record straight on Oklahoma's terms because in reality it's not really clear how the money is divided up.

“You know, a lot of times, people around here say, ‘Administrative costs! They’re outrageous! They’re too high! Well, what do you have to say that?”

House Bill 1498 would detail how every dollar is spent in education. How much is going to instruction, teacher salaries, benefits, administration, et cetera.

“You would like to think that every year we put money in to the formula—you would like to think it’s going to instruction which is the classroom side of it—my theory is that it’s probably not.”

Casey says legislators complain because education gets so much money—about a third of the budget-- and yet the per-pupil expenditure is still ranked low.

Now, maybe, they’ll have a better understanding.

"Like I say, I couldn’t tell you whether administrative costs are too high, or too low, or just right, but the bottom line is that there’s a lot of people out here who have an opinion—so why not have data that supports that versus just something that you heard from another group."

The legislature is giving Education more money than they ever have—but Casey says there are 40,000 new students since 2008, which makes it hard to raise the per pupil expenditure, no matter how they calculate the numbers.

Emily Wendler was KOSU's education reporter from 2015 to 2019.
KOSU is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.

Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.
Related Content