Yesterday, Rick Hess of AEI warned state education officials that the federal funds on which they’ve grown so dependent are not a permanent solution:

Of the 34 states that had passed budgets by mid-June of this year, 23 had factored in federal “rescue” dollars. This means that instead of squeezing benefits, trimming formulas, or otherwise taking this opportunity to get their affairs in order, states were leaning on their members of Congress to funnel more borrowed bucks their way.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s spokesman observed to the NYT that this behavior makes the federal aid “a real double-edged sword. This money will not be there next year, and we’re not going to get back up to the funding that they had previously been used to.”

And today, Hess pushed back against Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s frankly bizarre claim that public school budgets have been facing tough cuts for the better part of a decade:

Duncan’s own National Center for Education Statistics, for instance, reports that, nationally, current K-12 per-pupil expenditures increased from 2003-04 (seven years ago) to 2006-07 (four years ago–and the most recent year for which NCES reports spending) by 17%–from $8,310 to $9,683. That $1,373 bump means that districts have absolutely not “been cutting for five, six, [or] seven years.” Indeed NCES data make clear that nominal school spending nationally hasn’t once declined in the half-century concluding in 2006-07. And even in the past two years, job losses in K-12 have been much more modest than in the private sector. It’s befuddling that Duncan is making excuses for officials bemoaning their twice-a-century belt tightening, rather than encouraging them to take a hard look at benefits, staffing, operations, and management.

Some states are worse than others. California is a particularly egregious offender:

Duncan, who took pains last week to celebrate the $1.2 billion that Edujobs is funneling to California, might also want to consider the recent Pepperdine study of 52 California districts, which reported that spending rose 21.9% from 2003-04 to 2008-09, outpacing state income growth and inflation. On a per-pupil basis, spending actually jumped 25.8% over that period. Tellingly, despite California’s money woes, spending was flat in 2008-09. Meanwhile, classroom spending as a share of total outlays fell from 59% to 57.8%. Where did the money go? Well, pay rose 28% for certificated supervisors and administrators and jumped 44% for classified supervisors and administrators. Rather than pushing districts to correct for recent profligacy, though, Duncan is encouraging them to prop up payrolls, salaries, and benefits. [Emphasis added.]

Let’s not forget that public school supervisors and administrators in California exercise a considerable amount of political power, while California’s schoolchildren, disproportionately poor, do not.

Hess then draws the contrast between public sector and private sector job losses:

The Rockefeller Institute reports that private sector employment in general has been hit far harder during this recession than the public sector. While local education employment has taken its hardest hit since 1980, that’s not saying much. In three prior recessions, public education actually added jobs while everyone else was cutting. This time round, education employment has declined just 1.3% even as private sector employment has dropped 6.8%. So much for cutting to the bone. In fact, those with a more arduous notion of efficiency than the Secretary’s might want to peruse my forthcoming book Stretching the School Dollar (due out next month from Harvard Education Press), which offers a raft of analyses–from the likes of Mike Casserly, Marguerite Roza, June Kronholz, and Stacey Childress–which explore how districts can get more bang for the buck. [Emphasis added.]

I intend to read Hess’s book ASAP and report back to you. I wish I lived in a world in which the president would name Rick Hess as Secretary of Education — before, that is, he abolished the U.S. Department of Education.