November 14, 2006
For Immediate Release

Monday, a legislative audit was published showing rampant "over-reporting" of free lunch kids by Kansas school districts.

The Legislative Division of Post Audit (LPA) has a long history of producing highly accurate and useful reports, but it was important for LPA to soften this one in favor of the cheaters because LPA leaned heavily on the false statistics in its vaunted school funding study last year. That is the study that Kansas Supreme Court and the legislature relied upon to pass $550 million per year in new school spending this year.

To a knowledgeable reader, every possible point of contention was spun by the auditors to help minimize or explain away the over-reporting. And, the report provides a huge laundry list of "talking points" for defenders of the dishonesty to use to alibi the fraud or baffle critics. Furthermore, the audit ignores several major and obvious questions which should have been asked.

Nonetheless, the LPA audit found and published a good deal of very useful and revealing information.

To quote the report, "In 2003-04, Kansas had 54,000 more free-lunch students than adjusted figures from the U.S. Census would suggest. The primary reason for this difference is that the free-lunch count includes approximately 22,000 ineligible students for that year, based on the proportion of ineligible students [estimated by LPA]."

The second sentence in this statement is astounding. Let me translate it for you. "We have constructed explanations for 29,000 bogus students. We are going to ignore the other 25,000 by assuming that the Census Bureau is wrong and the districts are right, even though we already found at least 22,000 false free-lunch students in the districts' numbers."

In my October 31 article "Education Council Recommends Continued Cheating", I estimated the number at 55,000, very close to the LPA's estimate. The audit provides detailed information I did not have or could not get for my estimates, which I will use here to fine-tune mine. Unlike the LPA, I'm going to assume the Census Bureau is right. What motive do they have to be wrong? If they are wrong, why did LPA ignore the fact that any Census Bureau error has a 50-50 chance of making the numbers look worse instead of better?

Number of free lunch kids reported by districts	130,000
Kids 5-17 under 130% of poverty according to Census Bureau	76,000
Difference	54,000
Less: Kids under 5 or over 17 reported by districts	-6,500
Less: All foster kids vs. Census Bureau's under 15 foster kids	-3,000
Add: Number of poverty kids in private schools	+2,500
My corrected figure for phantom kids using the LPA numbers	47,000

It is my contention that there is just as much chance this number is understated as overstated. LPA never considers or even mentions that possibility.

I believe there is a fatal flaw in the LPA methods that could explain why they estimate only 22,000 false students while I estimate 47,000.

One of the 2010 Commission members nailed it Monday when LPA presented the audit to legislators. Stephen Iliff said, "Twenty-seven percent, or 80 of the 296 free lunch forms you checked, were ineligible, so you used another form they filled out, their income tax returns, to confirm their income."

His point, of course, is that many of these people already falsified the free lunch document, so why wouldn't they also falsify their income tax returns? The payoff for cheating is much higher with income tax returns.

According to federal government figures, the lowest twenty percent of taxpayers report only $1.00 of income for each $2.31 they spend. The $1.00 includes income from all sources including welfare and other public assistance. This group's income tax returns are radically more dishonest than the other four quintiles of taxpayers. The second most dishonest group of tax returns is the next quintile up.

Therefore, LPA used the tax returns of the two most dishonest groups of taxpayers to confirm the accuracy of heavily dishonest free lunch applications. Give me a break!

Many other factors and issues are analyzed in the LPA audit, many of them minor in nature, but some extremely interesting. Next week I will analyze some of those in depth.

In the meantime, virtually all of the discussion in the legislative committee and in the 2010 Commission meeting yesterday was directed at "fixing" the free lunch dishonesty problems and continuing to use free lunch to fund schools. Only one tiny mention was made, by Representive Peggy Mast, that free lunch should be discarded and a another way found to fund "real" at-risk kids.

That, of course, is exactly what needs to be done. Discard free lunch and poverty and fund programs for real, in-the-flesh kids who are struggling, no matter what the reason. If we are going to insist on pursuing the asinine poverty theory, let's use real poverty figures that parents and the schools cannot falsify.

The 2010 Commission is the group that will recommend how to fix our schools, including the broken at-risk programs. Commission Chairwoman Rochelle Chronister declared "poverty is the only thing we've ever been able to find that explains [why kids fail]." I'll leave it to the reader to figure out how ridiculous that statement is.

She also made a thinly concealed reference to how stupid legislators are, saying "we have trouble keeping things separate sometimes - legislators versus committee members with expertise." I'll admit this comment followed a couple of off-target questions and comments by legislators, but this was the Legislative Post Audit Committee and not an education committee.

2010 Commission member Dr. Ray Daniels, retired Kansas City Kansas superintendent, said "Just because we have fewer [actual free lunch] kids, we shouldn't get less money. We can't cut money for the kids who need it."

Daniels was also against any checking of at-risk applications. He said, "The district would have to decide which parents to call liars. If you check, parents won't trust the schools, then the next year the number of [free lunch] applications will fall."

KCK is one of the champion districts at cheating on free lunch kids. It was a KCK legislator who got free lunch inserted into the state funding formula back in 1992. He is now a tax-paid lobbyist for the district. Daniels is obvious and unabashed about using his position on the 2010 Commission to preserve his district's built-in pork barrel.

Senator Jean Schodorf, Chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and Co-Chair of the 2010 Commission, commented, "Last year and the year before we tried to define at-risk. It's probably going to come up again. Poverty is the clearest." Schodorf works for Wichita Public Schools, the #1 grand champions of free lunch cheating in Kansas.

Representative Kathe Decker, Chairwoman of the House Education Committee and a member of the 2010 Commission, said, "We've been looking at this for eight years. The free lunch count is very, very close to the number of at-risk kids." Unfortunately, this is not true, and if it was, it is meaningless. One might as well say "George Brett got a hit in 29% of his at-bats. We have 29% of Kansas kids at-risk. George Brett's batting average is an excellent indicator of the number of at-risk kids in Kansas." Decker did not run for re-election and will not be back when the legislature convenes in January.

The reader can see why honest parents and honest school officials don't have a chance. The cheaters are winning, winning big, and for the most part, only the drinkers of the education Kool-Aid are guarding the henhouse.