Questions with Solid, Though Definitely Not Good, Answers

Fellow Bluegrass Institute blogger David Adams and I recently got challenged in his Kentucky Progress blog as follows,

“When are you going to discuss in respect to education policy---

How much should local school districts contribute to public education?

How much should the state contribute?

What about Pre-school and Kindergarten?

Should there be all day kindergarten?”

These are legitimate policy questions; however, there is a very solid reason why we have not addressed them to date. That reason is the underlying data to intelligently answer these questions requires a trustworthy education financial system that allows us to accurately figure the “buck” part of the “bang for the buck” performance of the various education programs that Kentucky operates. That information should come from the Kentucky Department of Education’s MUNIS financial system, but right now MUNIS is a mess.

And, MUNIS has been an acknowledged mess for at least two years when this report came out.

So, we don’t have a decent idea about what we are paying for many programs such as teacher professional development or how much the state’s CATS assessment program really costs.

How, exactly can we decide how much more to spend on programs when we don’t have a good idea what we are spending on them now?

So, our policy answer to the questions above is to first get the MUNIS fiscal accounting system in order and then to conduct some real efficiency studies to see which education programs are really working.

Once all that is done, we will finally be ready to intelligently discuss the full answers to those policy issues, but not before.