Perry’s “phenomenal” False

Rick Perry parried a question about the 2013 Legislature reversing school funding cuts approved two years ago by challenging the premise.

At a Jan. 9, 2013, press conference, recapped by the Texas Tribune, Perry said: “We’ve had public education funding growing at three times the public education enrollment. So you’ve had a 70 percent increase of funding from 2002 to 2012. You’ve had a 23 percent increase in enrollment… I think under any scenario over the last decade, the funding that we have seen in the state of Texas for public education has been pretty phenomenal.”

The enrollment bump was about 20 percent through the 2011-12 school year.

But the cited spending increase didn’t reflect overall education spending, we found, and after vital adjustments, state education aid in 2012 appears to have been less, by 25 percent, than such aid in 2002.

We rated this spending claim as False.

Peruse the full fact-check and others about educational spending to the right.