You and your office pool didn’t win the record-large Powerball this week, but at least all those tickets you bought will help support local schools — right?
Not necessarily.
Use of lottery funds varies by state, but even when states earmark money from ticket sales for education — as many advertise they do — schools don’t always get a financial windfall, experts say.
Read more: How to Watch the $1.5 Billion Powerball Drawing Live
“Revenues generated from lottery have very little or no impact on overall education spending,” said Lucy Dadayan, a senior policy analyst at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, an Albany, New York, think tank.
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