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Why Republican Governance Sucks, Part 3: Vote Democratic for better education [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-12
In the first two entries in this series, we saw how blue states have lower maternal and infant mortality than red states and how blue states enjoy longer life expectancy than red states. In other words:
Vote Democratic, protect mothers and infants
Vote Democratic, live longer
Now let’s consider education. There are multiple ways to compare states on this characteristic, but let’s take a look at educational attainment first: the percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or higher. This recognizes the importance of college degrees for career opportunities and advancement in high-paying fields of the modern information and scientific economy, including IT, engineering, and the sciences, as well as professions like law and medicine. Data is from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey in 2021:
States With the Highest Percentage of Bachelor’s Degrees
Massachusetts 50.6 Maryland 48.6 Vermont 44.4 Colorado 44.4 New Jersey 43.1 Connecticut 42.1 Virginia 41.8 New Hampshire 41 Washington 41 New York 40.9
Where have we seen this before? Nothing but blue states.
States With the Lowest Percentage of Bachelor’s Degrees
West Virginia 24.1 Mississippi 24.8 Arkansas 25.3 Louisiana 26.5 Kentucky 27 Alabama 27.4 Nevada 27.6 Oklahoma 27.9 Indiana 28.9 Wyoming 29.2
9 red states and 1 swing state (NV). And at the low end, these states have barely half the proportion of residents with 4-year degrees that we see in the best-performing states. I’m sure you’re not surprised.
However, although states have numerous policy levers to promote post-secondary education, there are probably multiple factors at play in this geographic sorting. Those who are better educated might be migrating to blue states because of higher job concentrations in major urban areas or other demand factors (for example, both Maryland and Virginia are adjacent to Washington DC and the federal government demand for a large and well-educated workforce). Maybe we should take a look at an alternative measure of support for education. Per-pupil spending for K-12 public schools seems like a good bet (though this is also strongly influenced at the local level). Data is from the Census Bureau and covers FY 2023. Nine states have missing data, but these include both blue (eg MA, NY) and red (eg, TN, AL) states, so it shouldn’t bias results.
Highest Per-pupil spending by state
Vermont $26,345 New Jersey $26,280 Connecticut $24,896 New Hampshire $21,731 Delaware $21,340 Rhode Island $21,182 Alaska $20,340 Pennsylvania $20,056 Hawaii $20,056 Illinois $19,598
That’s 9 blue states, 1 red. Ok, time for a look at the lowest spending:
Lowest Per-pupil spending by state
Idaho $10,203 Utah $10,333 Oklahoma $11,142 Arizona $11,297 Florida $11,862 South Dakota $11,932 Mississippi $12,093 Texas $12,304 North Carolina $12,492 Arkansas $12,648
8 red states and 2 swing states (AZ, NC). Yes, there’s a pattern here.
Per-pupil spending is not necessarily the best indicator of educational quality, as money can be spent both poorly and wisely. For example, Utah sticks out for low spending yet is also pretty close to the top 10 states for proportion of the population with a bachelor’s degree (36.8%, running some 8-12% ahead of the red states at the bottom on that measure). But we’re seeing a familiar story here: as in health, blue states simply perform better in education, across multiple measures, than their red counterparts.
It’s possible to develop composite measures that weight and combine multiple aspects of school performance and support, such as funding and student outcomes. These will give different results based on the variables selected and how they’re weighted. The map at the top of the diary is one such example: it shows 2024 rankings of states based on a composite of K-12 performance, funding, safety, and higher education quality, from the magazine Consumer Affairs. The results? The top 5 states are MA, NY, NJ, WA and PA (4 blue states, one swing); the bottom 5 are AL, OK, ID, AZ and NM (3 red, 1 swing, 1 blue). We could go on, but that would just get you more of the same.
The key takeaway: Vote Democratic for better education.
Next time: wages and income.
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