One should be used to stretching of the truth in political advertising. But we have sunken below even that low standard.

Or, more accurately, the Greater Wisconsin Committee, which has made the TV ad claim that the state’s $800 million in cuts to education have resulted in such outrages as …

“My daughter has not enough tables and chairs in her room and she has kids sitting on the floor,” a man says, sitting with a woman and two young girls in a restaurant. A citation flashes on the screen: the state budget bill.

Then a young man standing outside says: “Forty-seven in a room, they don’t get much attention.” An onscreen graphic reads, “Classes are overcrowded,” and cites the aforementioned report issued by the Department of Public Instruction — a widely publicized report summarizing a statewide survey of schools following the budget cuts.

Together, they essentially make the same point: Walker’s school-aid cuts were so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom.

The problem with the ads, according to PolitiFact, is that they are false:

The “not enough chairs” anecdote is presented as one family’s experience, but the “47 in a room” line is presented as a broad statement of fact, bolstered by the “classes are overcrowded” tagline and citation of a statewide survey as proof. …

When asked for backup, the group’s leader, Michelle McGrorty, cited the statewide survey published in November by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators in conjunction with the state DPI, which is independent of the governor’s office. …

What we don’t know — and what the GWC cannot establish from the report  — is the size of the classes to bolster its “overcrowding” view.

The survey did not ask how many kids were in classrooms, or how many more students were added to classrooms. It simply asked whether any class sizes had increased. Nowhere in its analysis of the survey does DPI describe the resulting class sizes as “overcrowded.”

According to WASDA and DPI officials, the survey did not attempt to get at whether school officials viewed their classes as overcrowded — in part because it is a subjective term.

The survey does not document any shortage of desks or chairs in classrooms either.

Asked about the survey, McGrorty said the findings “definitely” mean there will be some overcrowding.

But we contacted DPI and WASDA and another trade association and found no one claiming overcrowding or any specific increase in class size averages.

WASDA has long tracked increased class sizes — and says they are not a new phenomenon. Twenty years of state limits on school taxation have driven up class sizes for years, said Miles Turner, executive director of the group. He and others noted particularly that “specials” classes such as art and music have been combined as districts have laid off some of those teachers.

Another statewide association, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said class size increase have not risen to “troublesome” levels.

Teacher layoffs occur in every school district every year because of fluctuations in enrollment in grades and in subject areas. Class sizes also fluctuate because of growth or shrinkage from one class year to the next, along with student interest in specific classes. Some school districts make up for increasing class sizes by hiring extra teacher aides instead of teachers. There are two classes where enrollments beyond 47 are commonplace — band and chorus. And excessively large class sizes, however that’s defined, is a matter to be taken up not with the state, but with the school board.

Nothing in the preceding paragraph matters, though, because of the following:

That leaves us with fact checking the specific anecdotes, but Greater Wisconsin — which is funded by labor, Democratic Party groups and wealthy individual donors — refuses to name the people or even cite the districts involved.

McGrorty told us the group is concerned about potential harassment or threats of violence against the speakers. …

In trying to show that Walker’s budget has caused school overcrowding, the Greater Wisconsin Committee misuses a survey of schools, cloaks its anecdotes in anonymity and provides no verification of its assertions.

In our view, the ad’s message is that school crowding is common and dramatic, assertions not backed up by key school officials or the research cited. Class sizes have increased, and Walker’s budget is partly responsible, but that trend began before Walker, and other factors play in.

In any case, that is not the same as “overcrowding” — a description not even school and union officials are using.

Of course, we already know that certain Democratic support groups have problems with the truth. It would seem that Greater Wisconsin Committee ads should be moved into the category of fiction.