Kentucky Worse Than Mississippi on Pupil Spending Cuts

Now Mississippi gets to say thank dog for Kentucky!

 

Travis Waldron at Think Progress:

States have made deep cuts to their education budgets in the years since the Great Recession, and as their budgets remained crunched by lower levels of tax revenues, more than half are spending less on education this school year than they did last year, a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found.

Overall, 26 states will spend less per pupil in fiscal year 2013 than they spent in 2012, while 35 are still spending less than they did before the recession.

As the following chart from CBPP shows, Alaska, Alabama, and Washington are leading the way in education cuts, reducing funding by at least $200 per student:

That's Kentucky cutting $60 per pupil from an already criminally insufficient education budget, and Mississippi adding a pitiful but at least positive one dollar per pupil.

Kentucky still spends significantly more than Mississippi on education and it shows in everything from diploma and college rates to economic growth. But Mississippi apparently knows better than Kentucky how stupid it is to apply austerity hysteria to education.