Public School Employment Outpaces Enrollment

Public schools in the United States have managed to see a total increase of around 96 percent since 1950. However, the number of administrators and public school employees is outpacing the number of students enrolling in these schools. The number of administrators as well as non-teaching staff members has increased by a whopping total of 702 percent since 1950. The information was first provided by a study of school from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. In the report, it is made clear that public school employment continues to grow and is outpacing enrollment. The study says that just about all of the states in the nation have seen a large increase in the number of non-teaching personnel added to schools, especially when compared to the number of students attending the school.

There were certain states that managed to see the most increases. In the state of Hawaii, the number of students enrolling in school increased by a total of 2.7 percent. However, the number of non-teaching staff and administrators ended up increasing by a total of 68.9 percent. All of these increases took place within the span of more than a decade, form 1992 up until 2009. The state of Minnesota also saw an increase. Student enrollment had increased by a total of 8.1 percent and the number of administrators and non-teaching personnel had increased by a total of 68.2 percent.

The report was created with the use of a number of different statistics that came from the National Center for Education Statistics. The CEO for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Robert Enlow, has said, “It’s astounding that billions of dollars are wasted on personnel in American public schools who do not produce educational results.” He also said, “We need to rethink how we spend our money including whether we would get better student outcomes if we redirected these funds to parents so they could send their child to the school of their choice.” The study also showed that if the non-teaching personnel grew at the same pace as the actual population of students attending schools, the public school districts would have much money. In fact, the schools would have a total of around $24.3 billion each year.

And, even though there was an increase in personnel, the number of graduates from public high schools did manage to increase, reaching its peak during the 1970’s. The study also showed that the reading scores of students declined between 1992 and 2008 while scores for math remained the same throughout that period.