According to OCPA, someone is cooking the books to show we aren't spending enough on education. Comparing the numbers for '07-'08, the "official" number was $7,615 while the "actual" figure should read more like $10,257. I don't really see how depreciation of building and assets would amount to accountable costs as it relates to educating children. Dollars spent per pupil is somewhat relevant until you consider Oklahoma has a very low cost of living. We also need to know is the accounting the same on school funding the same from state-to-state? Otherwise it's hardly a relevant point to show Oklahoma is 49th on the list. Of which, I still can't find a list which shows us as 49th, closest I can get is 46th, which I realize is not vastly better.
"For approximately three times, OCPA research fellow Steve Anderson, a Certified Public Accountant and a former state-certified teacher with 17 teaching certifications, has attempted to calculate just how much money Oklahomans really pay for their schools.
Following generally accepted accounting principles, Mr. Anderson compiled the federal, state and local expenditures for Oklahoma's public schools. He discovered that Oklahoma's per-pupil expenditure for the 2007-08 school year -- the latest year for which data were available -- was not $7,615, the oft-cited "official" number. Rather, he estimated it was $10,257.
If the CEO or chief financial officer of any public company disseminated misleading financial data to the same extent as Oklahoma's education officials, they would be subject to criminal and civil prosecution. Indeed, according to Frederick Hess, a former public high school teacher and current director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, "school accounting guidelines would bring smiles to an Enron auditor."
How, you may ask, can the "official" reports be so far off the mark?
It's really quite simple. When computing expenditures, the government's school accounting systems simply exclude many significant costs. A few examples:
• depreciation of buildings and other capital assets;
• spending via "dedicated revenues," which are funneled directly to schools without going through the appropriations process;
• retirement benefits as a cost in the year incurred; and
• interest on unfunded pension obligations resulting from our repeated failure to fund benefits as they are earned.
Disturbingly, there are even more costs, which could have been included but were not. For example, there are many public-school costs that are carried on the budgets of other government agencies, such as the cost of remedial instruction borne by the higher education system."
http://www.urbantulsa.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A30628
