Oregon Tax Research

[February 13th, 2002]

We're dragging a familiar name back into the Temple of Roguedom this week--Oregon Tax Research , a Portland organization that claims it has been providing "independent, non-profit, non-partisan tax research since 1935."

OTR may be independent and profitless, but its work is so biased that we're astonished that a journalist as smart as David Reinhard would make the group's work the centerpiece of a Feb. 3 diatribe against increased school funding.

The Oregonian's token right-winger quoted OTR's assertion that, despite all the hand-wringing over education cuts, Portland Public Schools' inflation-adjusted spending per student has increased 8 percent since 1991.

That's surprising, no doubt. It's
also incorrect. Here's why: OTR used the PPS total enrollment


figure for number for 1990-91, which was 54,904. But for this year, OTR used the average daily attendance, which for 2001-2002 is 47,424. That total is far lower than the district's total enrollment of 54,150. (Average attendance is always lower than enrollment.)

If OTR had used total enrollment in both years, the change in per-student spending would be an increase of 36 percent over the decade. That's less than inflation, which was 44 percent over the same period. Adjusted for inflation, spending has decreased by more than 5 percent.

Matt Evans, OTR's director, makes no apologies. He says he got his numbers indirectly from Portland Public Schools, and rather than quibbling over their accuracy, people should worry about how PPS is spending its money.

If this were OTR's first such mistake, we'd be more understanding. But three years ago, the organization produced similarly misleading data about the increase in teachers' salaries during the '90s. (See Rogue of the Week, WW, July 14, 1999.) At that time, an OTR director vowed that Evans would be more careful in the future.