"Without data, you're just another guy with an opinion"

With school board budget season upon us, the Director of Research for TransparentCalifornia.com, Todd Maddison, joined me to discuss school board spending.

Transparent California is the state’s largest database of public pay and benefits. The salary and benefits of just about every elected and appointed state and local official or employee are on the site.

We discussed Todd’s thoughts on:

- LAUSD’s new, $1.2 billion contract with teachers and other employees they reportedly can’t afford;

- Todd’s proposal to tie superintendent compensation to student performance; and

- How best to allocation school funding to make an impact.

As we have seen with the so-called Mississippi Miracle, we don’t need to spend more to get better results.

Todd has the receipts. In the graphs he provided below, you can see that spending is exploding with little to show for it.