In a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Arizona’s own Rep. Ruben Gallego, known for making inflammatory and inaccurate claims, did it again. Gallego claimed, contrary to all evidence, that Arizona legislators cut education funding every year.
Gallego claimed “I’ve been involved in politics in Arizona every year public schools get cut by the Republicans there every year.”
However, a report from the Goldwater Institute found, “Arizona’s per pupil funding has increased every decade since 1980, even adjusted for inflation, rising from $8,119 (1980) to $9,127 (1990), to $10,708 (2000), to $11,009 (2010), and to $11,594 (2020).” The report, A History of Increase: K-12 Funding in Arizona, also found:
- After adjusting for inflation, total per pupil funding for Arizona public school students has increased 42% since 1980, rising by over $3,000 per student from $8,119 to $11,594. (In unadjusted dollars, funding per student has increased even more dramatically during this time, from $2,602 to $11,594.)
- A classroom of 20 students has over $60,000 more on average to spend each year on students’ education than in 1980, even after adjusting for inflation.
- School districts have put less than 10% of this increase in available funding toward boosting teacher salaries. Compared to the more than $60,000 increase in funding available per class of 20 students, average teacher salaries have gone up just $4,500 per teacher (adjusted for inflation). Specifically, average teacher pay in Arizona in 1980 was $17,158, ($53,537 in today’s dollars). The state’s “20×2020” teacher pay raise supplied funding for average district teacher salaries of approximately $58,000 in 2020.
- Even adjusting for inflation, Arizona students receive more money today than any year in state history except a handful of years in the run-up to the Great Recession. During these years, the peak in funding was owed in part to state legislators’ decision to increase K-12 funding by over $200 million a year above what was required by law, in addition to a brief burst in the construction of new facilities to accommodate student growth.
Figure 1
As shown in Figure 1 above, per pupil funding in Arizona has increased from $2,602 (in 1980) to $11,594 (in 2020). Adjusted for inflation, this increase represents a rise of more than $3,000 per student per year, from $8,119 to $11,594.[vii]
While there have been intervals of decline amid the overall upward trajectory, including during the mid- 1990s and more significantly in the aftermath of the Great Recession, students have begun each decade with more funding than their peers did in the decade before, as shown below in Figure 2.
Figure 2
