From Bounded Rationality: How well is the lottery doing, and what impact is it having on the K-12 education of our children? Here are some numbers: The Lottery Commission reported total sales including fees and interest for the last year at $205,422,704. The Oklahoma Lottery announced last week that the lottery has contributed a total of $68 million dollars to the Education Trust fund. That's a lot of money. It's not what Governor Henry projected; Mr. Henry was touting that the lottery would pull in somewhere around $150 million. However, $68 million is still a sizable amount of money. According to the agency rules, here is how the money gets distributed: 45% - Kindergarten through 12th Grade Public Education, including but not limited to compensation and benefits for public school teachers and support employees, and early childhood development programs. 45% - Tuition grants, loans and scholarships to citizens of this state to enable such citizens to attend colleges and universities located within this state, construction of educational, capital outlay programs and technology for all levels of education, endowed chairs for professors at institutions and programs & personnel of the Oklahoma School for the Deaf and the Oklahoma School for the Blind. 5% - Teachers' Retirement System Dedicated Revenue Revolving Fund. 5% - School Consolidation and Assistance Fund. So start at $205 million. Then, transfer the statutory amount of $68 Million. Then take 45% of $68 million - that's $31 million. Wow! Where'd all that money go? To see what kind of direct impact this might have on each student and teacher, take that $31 million dollars and distribute that over the population of K-12 pupils and teachers. According to the Heritage Foundation there are around 664,728 K-12 public school students and teachers combined. I added the pupils and teachers together because that is how it's distributed above in the rules. This comes to the ANNUAL grand total per student and teacher benefit in the area of $47.00. Read more... Posted at 11/06/2006 07:55:00 AM