Posted on 09/17/2025 2:25:03 PM PDT by thegagline
Debates about public school funding sometimes include an underlying assumption that more funding results in better student outcomes. Available data tells a more complex story. Our review of 12,531 school districts across the country shows a negative correlation between overhead and student performance. In other words, districts that spent more on teacher and administrative pay saw their students’ standardized test scores drop.
Using the Open the Books proprietary database of government salaries across America, we calculated how much each U.S. state increased its total public school payrolls from 2019 to 2023. We compared that number to the change in each state’s ranking on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which measures reading and math skills for 4th and 8th graders.
By plotting the percentage change in payroll, state by state, versus the percentage change in the national rankings of its districts, a surprising picture emerges. Growing payrolls are not closely correlated with improved performance among districts in a given state. In fact, the opposite correlation appears. There is a mild inverse relationship between these two data sets. Higher overhead costs are associated with lower test scores.
In layman’s terms, that means while schools may hope that increasing their payroll will help their students outperform other states, there is little evidence in the data to support that claim. Again, the opposite seems to be true.
There were six states that increased their school payrolls by at least 23% from 2019 to 2023. Four of them saw student performance decrease, and one saw no change. Only Utah moved up in the NAEP rankings. *** Scafidi wrote that this “irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars is indefensible,” and that was before the surge in salaries over the last few years. From 2010 to 2022, the number of administrative staff rose by another 41%, while overall school employment rose by only 10%.
In 2023, 8,884 public school employees across the country earned salaries of at least $200,000, costing $2.08 billion,*** Christian Barnard, assistant director of education reform at the Reason Foundation, previously reported that per-pupil spending in the U.S. increased by almost 21% from 2002 to 2019, but 64% of the increased spending was used to pay benefits for instructional and support staff. Barnard found that if benefit pay had instead only kept pace with inflation, U.S. schools would have saved nearly $70 billion in 2019 — enough to give every teacher in America a $20,913 raise.***
A family member of mine is an upper elementary school teacher ( 4-5th grade) here in Texas. The teacher told me that there are several students in the teacher’s class who cannot read. Some of them cannot even recite the alphabet. (All are black)I asked why the students advanced to higher grade levels each year if they can’t read. “Social promotion” was the response. Social promotion really means that the illiterate blacks continue to advance grades.
[Hopefully this post isn’t taken down as I have noticed an increased amount of censorship here when the article is about the usual suspects misbehaving]
How much of is effect and cause. High pay doesn’t cause bad education, but rather the urban combat zones require higher pay to attract and keep teachers.
Schools receive far more money than ever before. Teachers receive far more money than ever before, yet results are worse than ever.
This has been an ongoing trend for the past 20 years. “Pay teachers more and school will improve”, they have claimed for at least 2 decades now.
It is all a lie, yet most still fall for it.
Roughly 14% of the population is Black,
yet the entire Democrat party elevates
them above all others.
Not all Blacks are Democrats, there are
some Blacks that can think for themselves.
So my entire country is beholden to a small group of white Liberals that depend on a very small group of Blacks for Power.
What is wrong with that picture?
Make liberal women work in the environment they created. No more transfers to the suburbs...
It is well known that poor student performance is caused almost entirely by low teacher morale, and the best solution is big pay raises, more days off and early retirement for teachers in the worst performing schools. /s
They always bitch that they need “more money”.
If you give them more money, you just get MORE …. of what we already got.
Politicians say, “More Taxes will solve everything!”
And the band played on....
Education took a nose dive when Carter created the Department of Education. They sold it with the promise it would bring up the standards of low performing states to that of high performing states. In reality it just brought down the testing scores of high performing states to that of the worst states. Years ago Mrtin Gross had a book with all the facts an figures to prove it. Although we are number one in cost per student by a long shot we don’t crack the top twenty five in results. A very expensive babysitting operation.
One can reasonably blame the US liberal teacher dominated public school system for the social strife this country is in and has been experiencing over the past fifty years. Obviously it only gets worse with time. It will take years to turn the public schools around but it must start and soon. First; Raise the qualification standards of teacher certification, eliminate all teacher’s unions, pay them on merit, eliminate tenure, reinstitute corporal punishment for trouble making students, teach the basics RRR and history and science, teach patriotism and put God and prayer back in the classroom. Just a thought.
Public schools are almost entirely run by females.
The mistaken premise is that if a child is a problem child then it is the school’s responsibility to address any and every problem. IT IS NOT THE SCHOOL’S RESPONSIBILITY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM UNLESS IT IS A LEARNING ISSUE. Chronic disruptive behavior should be handled by a different agency and NOT IN THE SCHOOL SETTING WHERE OTHER STUDENTS ARE IMPACTED.
I believe articles like this are misleading.
Those growing costs of public education is not going to the classroom teachers.
It’s going to top heavy management, specialists, and consultants.
You forgot to mention smaller class sizes, which they claim will boost outcomes. All it is designed to do is get more longshoremen full time jobs...errr, I mean more teachers. Which means more Vice Principals, and so on and so on. The vocation is a grift, they don’t get up in the AM to reach childrens minds, they are all in on extending their College experience into Kindergarten classrooms.
Why not a law that males and female teachers must be in a 50-50 rough ratio. Hire veterans first, give them a foot up, include police in the category as veterans too.
Disruptive behavior should be handled by Vice Principals and Male PE coaches. Allow shop students to design hack paddles.
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