PASADENA -- Long before the latest state budget reduced funding for public education, experts bemoaned what they say is a 25-year history of under-funded education.

But Caltech Professor D. Roderick Kiewiet, who has analyzed decades of per-pupil spending, disputes the widespread belief Proposition 13 is to blame. In 1978 the proposition rolled back property-tax valuations significantly for then-property owners. However, the effects on education spending were negligible, he said.

"People tend to equate bad public schools with Prop. 13,' said Kiewiet, a political science professor and co-author of "Stealing the Initiative,' an analysis of recent California initiatives and referendums designed to help readers understand state politics.

Proposition 13's effects were undeniable, but temporary, Kiewiet said.

"You had a serious drop in revenue in the first couple of years (but) a lot of that was covered with the big surplus that existed in the treasury at that time,' Kiewiet said. "It didn't really change the amount of money spent on education. Historically we tended to give less to public education and relatively more to police and corrections.'

But Proposition 13 still is often blamed.

"Everything that's happened in California since 1978, somebody can interpret it as 'That's because of Prop. 13,'' Kiewiet said. "My results tell me that it's more of an urban legend. What it did was, it constrained property-tax revenue. That's only one of several sources of revenue.'

Between 1968 and 1996 - the years he analyzed - California consistently spent less per pupil in terms of the available tax base - real personal income per capita - than the rest of the country, Kiewiet said. The state has always devoted less of the overall budget to education than most other states, he added.

In 2000-01, the most recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education, California spent $6,987 per pupil, compared to a national average of $7,376, or 24th in the nation. That same year, Pasadena Unified School District spent $7,186 per student.

Historically, about 40 percent of the state budget goes toward education, and that figure has not diminished, Kiewiet said.

What has changed is that the state once an economic powerhouse has become comparatively poorer, he said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, California was a very rich state compared to others. Because it was so rich, the state could devote a smaller portion to education and still look good in comparison, he said. In 1968, per-capita income was 21 percent higher in California than in the rest of the country. By the turn of the 21st century, it was about 4 percent higher.

"It's not so much that we got poorer, but other states in the country on average caught up with California,' Kiewiet said. "If we keep spending the same percentage of state income of K- 12 education ... as we get comparatively poorer ... our ranking in terms of state spending is going to fall, and that's what happened in the '70s and '80s. Other states just went past us.'

California ranked 18th from the top in per-pupil spending in 1975; by 1995 the state was 41st. In the late 1990s, California began to move toward the national average, he added.

"With this current (budget) trouble, I imagine we'll fall behind again,' Kiewiet said.

What those who blame Proposition 13 for the education system's economic woes fail to take into account is the effect of the later Proposition 4 and Serrano equalization decisions. Proposition 4 limited increases in state spending to the rate of inflation plus the rate of population growth. Serrano forbade local school districts from spending more per pupil than the state average a prohibition that many districts get around by using private foundations for fund raising.

Still, with differences including the percentage of English-language learners, Kiewiet cautions against drawing parallels between spending and quality of education.

"State-by-state comparisons are always a bit problematic,' Kiewiet said. "There are a lot of states that spend less per pupil than we do, and their students tend to score higher on national tests.'