On Wednesday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker explained how the savings gained through the collective bargaining changes recently passed by the legislature will more than offset cuts in state aids to most school districts.

That formula is altered, however, if school districts rush to implement new labor agreements before Act 10 goes into effect on March 26th.

Walker was joined at his press conference with administrators and board members from the New Berlin school district.

Those education officials praised Walker’s plan, noting that it allows for merit pay and flexibility which will improve the educational opportunities for Wisconsin students.

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While their leaders openly bemoan pending budget cuts due to an expected decline in state aid, Milwaukee Public Schools’ is spending $24,999 to private investigators to obtain evidence and provide surveillance of their teachers to determine residency.

That expenditure was one of the more interesting found during MacIver News Service’s routine examination of the MPS checkbook.

Others include:

$1,360 for coat rack rentals

$24,999 for MPS enrollment advertising

$16,000 for the Flood the Hood with Dreams mentoring program

$560 for after school yoga instruction

$4,600 for a Drumline coach

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This chart compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.

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UPDATE: Cost figures for the period 1970 through 1980 in the original version of chart 2, below, were inaccurate, and have been corrected in the revised version of the chart that appears below. This change does not affect the text of the article.

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Teachers unions, the Obama administration, and most Democrats in Congress want to spend another $23 billion that we don’t have to shore up public school employment. If we don’t go along, they tell us, it’ll be a “catastrophe” for American education. With fewer teachers our kids will supposedly learn less, further crippling our already wounded economy.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. To prove that rolling back this relentless hiring spree by a few years would hurt student achievement, you’d have to show that all those new employees raised achievement in the first place. That would be hard to do… because it never happened.

Student achievement at the end of high school has been flat for as long as we’ve been keeping track—all the way back to 1970. But we did get something in return for all that hiring: a great, big, fat, BILL.

If you graduated from high school in 1980, your entire k-12 education cost your fellow taxpayers about $75,000, in 2009 dollars. But the graduating class of 2009 had roughly twice that amount lavished on their public school careers. The extra $75,000 we’re now spending has done wonders for public school employee union membership, dues revenue, and political clout. It’s done a whole lotta nothin’ for student learning (see chart).

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As any exasperated advocate of commonsense education reform can tell you, liberals and their allies in the teachers unions will, like drunken spammers, never cease to declaim on how “PUBLIC EDUCATION NEEDS MORE MONEYS LOL.” Yet, as highlighted in the video above, a recent study by the CATO Institute has found that public educators routinely lie about the exorbitant costs of education so as to keep parents from realizing just how little the vaunted Leftist sacred cow of public education actually provides for their child. Yes, you read right. When it comes to public education costs, some of the biggest liars are people who our tax dollars pay to teach the truth.

Just as an example, the CATO study found that, while Washington DC public schools claim to spend about $17,000/student, the actual price tag is closer to $28,000. Just to put this in perspective, this is a higher price than the private Potomac School, Georgetown Preparatory School, Stone Ridge School and Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In fact, it’s only $2,000 less than Sidwell Friends, the ultra-exclusive private academy where President Obama’s own daughters attend.

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