Under the radar . . .

This study seemed to go under the radar with a short post on komonews.com earlier this week that linked to an article in the Spokesman Review.  The focus of the study was on per pupil expenditures from a Census Bureau report on 2011 data.  In the Spokesman Review the focus was on Idaho being the second lowest at $6800 per student for the third year in a row and Washington ranked 30th at $10,500 per student.  The national average was $10,560, the first drop since the Bureau began collecting data in 1977.

My sense is the legislators are pleased that our state's ranking didn't appear on the front page of our newspapers or in other media.  I was able to find a more detailed article about the study on today.com that focused much more on the reasons for the drop.

So our state ranks 30th at $10,500 per student.  OSPI data for 2011 shows Tahoma at $8,896 per pupil, well below the state average and near the bottom of the ranking for districts in our state.  Only twenty districts expended less per student than we did in 2011.  What questions does this data raise for you?  What might this data mean for the tax payers in our school system?