From a Times review of Al Gore's new book, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change:
The results, Mr. Gore goes on, can be seen in "the ever increasing inequalities of income and growing concentrations of wealth, and the paralysis of any efforts at reform." Such paralysis is particularly dangerous, he says, given the challenges facing America today, like declining public education financing (at a time when schools need to adapt "to the tectonic shift in our relationship to the world of knowledge") and continuing high unemployment (a by-product not only of the 2008 crash, but also of globalization, outsourcing and automation).
"Declining public education financing"? What could Mr. Gore, or the Times reviewer (who elsewhere in the review is deft in pointing out the hypocrisy of Mr. Gore's criticism of television and fossil fuels while selling his Current TV to the oil potentates who own Al Jazeera), possibly be talking about?
Here are the amounts the federal government spent via the Department of Education, according to Table 4.1 of the White House Office of Management and Budget, accessed this morning:
2000: $33.476 billion
2012 estimate: $98.467 billion
Here are the amounts New York City, the nation's largest public school system, spends on its public schools (not including colleges and universities):
1998-1999: $9.79 billion, according to a report by a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly from New York City)
2012-2013: $24.4 billion, according to the Web site of the city department of education.
Now, one can argue about inflation adjustments using the price of gold or the consumer price index. There may be some places, perhaps California, where the rate of growth in state funding for education has slowed (though the population growth has slowed, too). But taking even a mildly long view of it, "public education financing" hasn't been "declining," it's been doubling or tripling, as shown in the federal and New York City statistics above. It would have been nice had the Times review pointed this out rather than just passing along the decline claim as if it were accurate.