Public Education

We hear it every legislative session: More money for teachers salaries and more spending on education for our students.

Should our teachers in West Virginia receive higher salaries, of course. Should we increase classroom spending - well, lets look into that for a second.

You can see here how much each state spends per student. As you can tell, WV weighs in around $7,700 per student and ranked 19th nationally. Sidebar: That's about twice as much as what parents pay to private schools here in the state on top of the taxes they pay that goes to public education. But, that's an argument for another day.

Meanwhile, District of Columbia ranks #1 and spends about #13,000 per student.So, if spending per student is direct proportionate of how students will do in school, then DC's scores should be WAY above ours.

West Virginia's average ACT test score in 2007 was 20.6 while DC's average score was 18.7.

I have no problems giving teachers in West Virginia higher pay. We rank near the bottom and it makes recruitment tough for our public school system. But pumping more money into the system on the basis of an argument that it will increase our scores is just not plausible. Just ask the parents who send their kids to school in DC.

Our school system should be finding better ways to spend the money they already receive and making our school system more efficient and finding ways to keep kids attention.