For Immediate Release: November 27, 2002

San Francisco, CA — A program of school choice would eliminate wasteful spending and provide higher quality education, according to Grand Theft Education: Wasteful Education Spending in California, a new study released today by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI).

The study, authored by Lance T. Izumi, K. Lloyd Billingsley, and Diallo Dphrepaulezz argues that, instead of funneling money into wasteful programs year after year, parents should be able to use opportunity scholarships to direct their dollars to the private or public schools of their choice.

“California wastes huge amounts of education tax dollars,” said Lance Izumi, co-author of the study and director of PRI’s Center for School Reform.

“As politicians and bureaucrats have cried for more education funding, they have done very little to ensure that taxpayer funds are properly spent,” Izumi said.

The study shows how the California Department of Education (CDE) contributes to wasteful education spending by acting as a mere conduit of state funds rather than enforcing their lawful use. Because of this mentality, the study shows, CDE operations have been marked by glaring deficiencies:

• The CDE has overlooked the misconduct of districts and non-profits with a history of misusing state and federal funds.
• The CDE has not deployed a comprehensive central tracking system to determine the status and results of its monitoring activities.
• The CDE has failed to conduct sufficient on-site audits of non-profits that receive state and federal funds. From 1994 to 1998, the CDE’s audits division conducted zero on-site audits of school districts.
• Even where school districts are cited for fiscal improprieties, the CDE has been lax in requiring offending districts to correct their problems. In one case, a district did not correct its problems until 575 days after the CDE’s initial review.
• Few districts are sanctioned for failure to fix their problems.w

“Just as the state requires accountability for student learning in the classroom, so the state must hold itself and local districts accountable for the use or misuse of educational funding,” said Izumi.

“A choice system would reward schools that demonstrate their ability to increase student achievement and meet the interests of parents,” Izumi said.

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About PRI
For more than two decades, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has championed individual liberty through free markets. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility.