Bob McCarty Writes

The folks at the Georgia Lottery Corporation used a news release this afternoon to announce that the state’s 15-year-old gambling operation has transferred a total of $10 billion for education to the state of Georgia since its inception in 1993. TEN BILLION DOLLARS! Unfortunately, even that amount of money couldn’t guarantee improvements.

In an opinion piece in the state’s largest newspaper last month, Maureen Downey explains why, among other things, the statewide high school graduation rate was only 58.1 percent in 2005:

In raw number of dollars, the state is indeed spending more money, but the increases have gone largely to fund across-the-board teacher raises, enrollment growth and health insurance. However, state funding has not kept pace with soaring costs of building maintenance, textbooks and materials.

“When those costs go up but state funding does not, school systems have to spend money that otherwise would have been available to improve student achievement,” says Jeffrey Williams, a school finance expert and consultant to the school funding task force created by Perdue four years ago.

In a January 2007 article published, the Institute for Southern Studies cited a report that offered — and just as quickly took back — a small bit of optimism related to the impact lottery funds have on education:

According to the report, lottery scholarship students in New Mexico were more likely to drop out, while in Georgia lottery scholarship students had higher GPAs and were less likely to drop out.

The report suggest that Georgia’s scholarship program resulted in some grade inflation at the high school level to help borderline students qualify for the scholarships. There is also evidence that private colleges in Georgia increased their tuition to get more of the state funding. There was also a finding that the scholarships allowed money from family budgets to be used for other purposes such as purchasing new cars.

According to the report, increased funding for scholarships has not closed the gap between enrollment among lower income families and enrollment among higher income families. While enrollments have increased, the gap remains constant at around 30% more enrollment from higher income families.

The report also found that 93 percent of the Georgia lottery scholarships went to students that would have gone to college anyway, meaning that Georgia spent $9 to get $1 worth of additional college access. The report says “This situation raises questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of state money in Georgia.”

If only that $10 billion had been invested in an effort to generate — and reward! — real results instead of merely fattening the wallets of set-in-their-ways teachers whose primary focus seems to be upon themselves.

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