Published: March 17, 2009 10:05 pm      

Let the sun shine in on school financing

EDMOND — Sunshine Week, spearheaded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, will be observed March 15-21. That would be a good time for state Superintendent Sandy Garrett to announce that education officials will no longer mislead Oklahoma’s taxpayers about the real costs of public education.

Allow me to explain. Unlike schools or businesses in the private sector, the government’s school accounting systems routinely exclude many significant costs.

In 2005 I set out to determine how much Oklahomans are really paying for their schools. In a study titled “Education in Oklahoma: The Real Costs,” published by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, we presented a more comprehensive analysis of the costs of public education. Using generally accepted accounting principles as promulgated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, we compiled the federal, state and local expenditures on K-12 public schools in Oklahoma that were readily verifiable or calculable through third-party sources and that would be included on a regular financial statement.

We discovered that Oklahoma’s per-pupil expenditure in 2003 — the latest year for which data were available — was not $6,429, the oft-cited “official” number. Rather, it was $11,250.

If the CEO and finance division of any publicly held company attempted to influence public opinion with misstated financial data to the extent done by Oklahoma’s education officials, they would be subject to criminal and civil prosecution. Indeed, Frederick Hess, a former public high school teacher and current director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, stated “school accounting guidelines would bring smiles to an Enron auditor.”

The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman called our OCPA study “splendid.” He said it represented “a real public service.” By contrast, the president of the state’s most powerful labor union, the Oklahoma Education Association, called the study “highly suspect,” so we challenged the union to a public debate. Twice. We’re still waiting to hear from them.

While we’re waiting, I decided to update the numbers and take another look at where all this money is being spent. As was the case in 2005, my strategy this year was simple: I looked at every function that a private school would have to perform in a fiscal year, and then looked for the equivalent function in Oklahoma state government. Once the function was identified in a state agency, I traced how much of the agency’s cost was related to public K-12 education and included those costs in my financial statement.

The result? Taxpayers spent more than $6.5 billion in FY 2007 on Oklahoma’s public education system. That’s $10,942 per pupil. If the union again thinks this number is “highly suspect,” we at OCPA would welcome the opportunity to debate them on the matter.

It’s clear that government officials owe Oklahoma’s taxpayers more sunshine and transparency than they’re currently receiving. The financial statement I produced — which is available at ocpathink.org — is a valuable and useful tool, but the only reason it exists is that a private think tank devoted the time and resources necessary to produce it. Taxpayers deserve better from their government.

Sunshine Week would be a good time for Superintendent Garrett to announce that she will no longer allow the government’s school accounting systems to play these games, and that her office will publish annually a financial statement showing the real costs of education.



STEVE ANDERSON, a University of Central Oklahoma master’s graduate, is a research fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and a Certified Public Accountant with more than 20 years of experience in private practice. He also spent two years as a budget analyst in the Oklahoma Office of State Finance. He was formerly a state-certified teacher with 17 teaching certifications.