Half of Every Tax Dollar Goes Towards Education

The New Mexico Department of Taxation and Revenue opens it’s webpage with a question; who benefits when taxes are collected? It then goes on to proudly proclaim that 47% of your tax dollars go to public schools!
If someone’s benefitting from this program, I’m not seeing who it is. It’s certainly not benefitting the taxpayer. It’s not benefitting students either. As Justin pointed out, we already pay over $7000 per student, a huge increase over the past 30 years. Despite this, the education system still fails to deliver better results. The excess money has only succeeded in maintaining a system that lags behind the the demands for today’s world.
One way to finally begin putting a dent in the massive amount of money we funnel into our moribund education system is through education tax credits. Tax credits have saved other states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania millions of dollars. The Heartland Institute estimated in 2005 that tax credits could save our state $42 million over ten years.
New Mexicans should not be proud that we half our tax money for education. We need to see some change in the amount we fork over for mediocrity. Tax credits can begin this process.