Author: Carl Shan
As a former high school teacher who also spent his elementary, middle, high-school and college years in California public education institutions, I've always been very interested in the topic of California state education funding.
In this article, I'll explore the history of school funding in California. Through it, we'll discover that California has been woefully underfunding its schools for a long time. A series of policy decisions has led to this outcome, and while there have been initiatives to address the funding gap, the state is still far from meeting it's duty to students.
Let's start off by understanding just how much money California has spent on its students. Below is the inflation-adjusted per-student spending of each of the 50 states (plus D.C.) since 1970. Press "Play" and to see how each state has risen and fallen over time.
I've also plotted the median per-student spending in green, so you can see how California stacks up against the other states.
You can also hover over each state to see what it is. Feel free to select a comparison state from the dropdown below as well.
At first glance, not too shabby right? California seems to hover around the median most of the time, although there appears to be a dip in the '90s.
If you watch carefully, you can also see a large near-universal drop in per-student spending in 2008 due to the Great Recession.
It's tempting to stop the story here. You may be left with the impression that California's spending is mostly "meh". Not great, but also not terrible.
You'd be wrong.
One additional factor we need to consider is the wealth per state. Californians hear all the time about how, if they were a country, they would have the fourth-largest GDP in the world. Well, if that's the case then we should have higher expectations of California than other states. If it's bringing in the money, shouldn't it also be funding its schools more than the average state?
The chart below examines this exact situation.
Picture in your head if California (and all the other states) was a person. If you're picturing some hippie surfer, that's close enough. Let's call this person Mr. California
Let's say that Mr. California makes an annual salary equal to the actual income of the average Californian. In 2016, that would roughly come out to $60,300.
Now, let's say that Mr. California a child. Let's call her Lady Angeles. Unlike her dad, who she views as a bit of a bum, she aspires to be an actress and singer. And failing that, she'd settle for being a software engineer.
In a typical year, how much money does Mr. California spend on educating his daughter? And how does Mr. California Stack up against Mrs. Delaware, Ms. Texas, Mr. Ohio and the other residents of the United States?
In the graph below, I've calculated the percentage of each state's annual income that goes towards educating its kids. In doing so, I've also ranked each state, with California in blue.
Press "Play" and see how Mr. California stacks up now, adjusting each state for their annual income.
Woah. As you can see in both the interactive chart above, as well as the one below, a pretty different picture emerges than when we looked at things in the first chart. Rather than seeing California as mostly "meh", it looks like his daughter is right: he is a bum! Despite having the world's fourth largest GDP, Mr. California spends only a smaller percentage of that on educating his kids, when compared to the other states.
Why is that? Well, it's complicated. There have been a lot of California policies that have affected state spending.
In the chart below, try hovering over some key years and reading about the events that affected California's school funding.
(Note: You can also press "Play" on the button for the second chart and see how it affects this chart.)
{ Hover over the chart above to see this text update. }
Each of the policies or events that occurred on the dates in the chart above had an impact on California. Hovering over the year will allow you to read a little bit about each event. Each one could merit a whole essay deconstructing the impact it's had, but rather than spending the rest of this article explaining them, I'll direct you to a nifty explainer that's already been created to help you understand California's underfunding of its education system.
Ed100, a non-profit, non-partisan website created to freely educate students, parents and citizens on California's funding situation has done a great series of explainers on many of the policy events above.
I encourage you continue reading on their website.
Data source: here
Various ObservableHQ notebooks I used as inspiration and adapted code from, including ones by Mike Bostock, Jeff Heer and others.