On Sept. 12, “The New Math” told me in large type that school costs in Maine were way up. The article said: “… (T)he amount of money spent to educate the average public school pupil in Maine has shot up 50 percent in the past seven years, an average increase of more than 7 percent a year.”

I don’t know about the 50 percent, but the 7 percent didn’t sound right to me.

So I dug out my calculator, punched in $1 and hit the keys seven times. The result: $1.6057814 – which meant that the 7 percent figure was off. The calculator said a 50 percent increase over 7 years would mean a yearly average of only 6 percent.

The article didn’t mention inflation. I fired up Windows 98 and Googled “CPI,” which led to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Price Index for 1994-2002. This showed that, in 1982 dollars, something which cost $1.55 in 1994 cost $1.96 in 2002 – an increase of 26 percent from 1994 to 2002.

If you deduct the 26 percent from the published 50 percent, the real increase in school costs is something like 24 percent. Yes, 24 percent is bad enough, but it sort of lacks the drama of saying costs “shot up more than 50 percent.”

My suggestion: Handle numbers like these with care, especially during a time of heated discussion about Maine’s proposed tax cap.

Russ Burbank, Lewiston

Copy the Story Link