Californian voters, beware: Lottery revenue hardly helps schools

Since a memorable 1984 campaign linked the lottery and public schools, many local Californians believe their gambling contributes to the educational system. However, the lottery system funds under 2% of our state’s education revenue. Columnist Joe Mathews corrects this misconception, exhorting that public school funding must directly serve students in Fox & Hounds Daily. To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.

Can we stop pretending that lottery funds mean much of anything to schools?

In recent weeks, we have seen the recycling of a very old faux-scandal—that the state lottery is not producing enough money for California schools. The occasion for this latest news was a state auditor’s report finding that the lottery is not producing all that money for education.

It never has. Lottery funds have represented less than 2 percent of state education money ever since 1984. Indeed, the lottery wasn’t really about schools. As I’ve written previously, the lottery idea was created by a petition company that was looking to drum up its ballot initiative business in the early 1980s; the company convinced an out-of-state lottery company to pay them, and voters went along.

Unfortunately, the bogus idea from that 1984 campaign—that the lottery is a big source of funding for schools—endures. And it gives conservatives a reason to advance skepticism about school funding, as State Sen. Ling Ling Chang did recently. 

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by Aidan Howe