Play the Hoosier Lottery, and your money will be part of the some $800 million spent just last year on those trying to win big. A lot of people think that the profits from the Indiana State Lottery benefit education.

In fact, many people asked on our Facebook page why schools are so strapped for cash if the lottery brings in millions of dollars. As it turns out, the money doesn't go where you might think.

Patrick Pierce, a Political Science Professor at St. Mary's College and lottery expert, has researched educational lotteries around the country.

"You really, in Indiana, shouldn't expect the lottery to provide the slightest benefit for education," said Pierce.

Here is where the Indiana Lottery revenues go. Last year, more than $30 million went to pension funds for police and firefighters, $30 million in lottery revenue went to a teacher retirement fund, and about $120 million went to the Build Indiana Fund.

"Put bluntly, the build Indiana Fund is pork barrel project for folks in the state legislature," said Pierce.

The reality is for every dollar spent on education, only about a quarter goes to state programs.

That is true in Indiana as well as Michigan. Michigan, at least, targets lottery revenue toward education. The question, though, is whether that money actually benefit schools.

Last year, Michigan Lottery brought in nearly $725 million in revenue, which goes directly toward the School Aid Fund, a giant pot that includes revenue from cigarette, income, and property sales taxes, to name a few. The money then gets dispersed to schools.

In the roughly four-decade history of the Michigan Lottery, some $15.2 billion has gone to the School Aid Fund.

Still, says Pierce, "Lottery revenue that is supposedly devoted toward education is not increasing spending on education."

Professor Pierce is saying even states like Michigan that send lottery funds to education end up spending less on education in the long term.

"It's exactly the opposite of what you thought was going to occur. We're getting new revenue, it's going toward education, and then you end up spending less on education after this period of time," said Pierce.

Pierce says at first, education spending gets a significant bump. But after that first year, the rate of increase on education spending actually tends to slows down. After about 7 or 8 years, less money is spent on education than would have been spent if the state didn't have a lottery at all.

That is because lawmakers tend to use the additional education money as wiggle room, and pass it to the general fund to balance the budget or cut taxes.

In fact, just this month Governor Granholm approved an act to transfer a $208 million School Aid Fund budget surplus to the general fund in order to create a balanced budget.

"It's basically a fraud that's perpetrated on citizens and states saying, at least implicitly, education funding is going to go up," said Pierce.

Professor Pierce said the states that have done the best with lotteries are ones that have funded entirely new programs, like scholarship funds.

He recommends if you want something to change, push your legislators to make sure lottery money will truly be additional educational funding.