American schools go on utterly insane hiring spree since 1950. Kids shrug, continue to do poorly on tests
October 25, 2012
(Credit: Gates Foundation)
A new study from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice finds that America’s public schools saw a 96 percent increase in students but increased administrators and other non-teaching staff a staggering 702 percent since 1950. Teaching staff, in comparison, increased 252 percent, Reason reports.
If non-teaching personnel had grown at the same rate as student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3 billion annually. Scafidi’s report concluded that $24.3 billion is equivalent to an annual $7,500 raise per teacher nationwide or a $1,700 school voucher for each child in poverty.
Comments (70)
by Fred the Fourth
If you are concerned about inflation-adjustment on the first chart, please look at this report, which focuses on staffing levels rather than dollars:
http://www.edchoice.org/CMSModules/EdChoice/FileLibrary/931/The-School-Staffing-Surge–Decades-of-Employment-Growth-in-Americas-Public-Schools.pdf
by fgbouman
Thanks for the link. The data are more meaningful than the chart accompanying this article.
by Glitchus
The construction site that I thought was going to be a new school turned out to be a massive office complex for the school district. The waste in our public school system is staggering. I’ll no longer support any levies for these beurocrats and fat cat union folks, because the money sure isn’t going to the kids.
by MarcusB
Lies, damn lies and statistics. The chart seems to (deliberately?) ignore some stark reality related to ‘per pupil’ student costs – the Private sector entered the education market in a big way around 1985 and almost ALL fee increases can be assigned to that single development. If you did two charts of expenditure (private v state) you’d have costs per student flat lining in state schools and spiking in private school.
by Joanne Jacobs
Perhaps you’re thinking about for-profit colleges, which have expanded with the growth in federal student aid. The chart tracks K-12 public school expenditures, which have gone up in real dollars.
by Bob Delsol
Or perhaps he wasn’t thinking — which is where talking points come in handy.
by BrianT
The paragraph below the chart says it is measuring only public schools. That would exclude the economics of private schools, methinks.
by Bob Delsol
Marcus was just trying to prove the point about poor reading skills despite a heft increase in spending. I for one am now quite convinced. Thanks, Marcus.
by Ronchris
The chart is about K-12 expenditures and the study is about K-12 staffing.
The private sector is dwarfed by the massive public leviathan in elementary, middle, and high school education.
And if you did make two charts of expenditure for K-12 education (private v state), you would see private costs flat while public schooling costs spiral out of control. What a shock!
by Dwee
Gad, I hope the liberals wake up before their little fantasy world turns into their worst nightmare. The reality, not the IDEAL they all dream about, but the reality is, public school education is inferior and getting worse, costing a fortune, building country club schools for the same bored students and inept teachers. Hiring 100,000 not able to be fired, union science teachers will NOT help. Obamacare will make investment in medical research go numb. Academic intellectuals can have so little common sense it is scary.
by Face
You’re saying that “Obamacare” will halt medical research, by helping people get the healthcare they need?
by Mona Eltahawy
For U.S. Department of Education school teachers it must be difficult to be part of such an expensive and failing system of education and union establishment.
> to know you’ve got all the technology you need in your classroom and lack the ability to use it.
> to see your union dues get spent on political campaigns representing less than half of America.
> to prevent students from using online tools that are better than your own instruction.
> to know the history of your school system, your employer, your tenured combatants.
> to know the pattern of abuse will continue so you can collect a paycheck and insurance.
> to know the impact your system has had on our environment.
> to be incapable of rising up against the system you now find yourself inside.
Maybe you didn’t break it but fueling it makes it your responsibility.
by smb12321
Forget adjusted for inflation excuses. Nashville iis a case in point. Since 1960 it has lost 20 pct of its Students despite dramatic growth (private / home schooling). Yet administration has risen 100 %. Twt scores are substandard and graduation rates are barely unchanged. No need to adjust for inflation.
by RaymondReedHardy
This is a political advertisement! Not science. Are the dollars in the chart adjusted for inflation? Do the authors make it clear that the average cost per student at a “private” K-12 school is more like $20,000? Possibly more importantly, the cost of a private-school education does not include the added costs of educating our nations special children. If the folks who published this article have their way our public schools will have no money and will be populated by only those students the private enterprise schools refuse to serve. I am disappointed that this kind of “reporting” has shown up here.
by Face
If the folks who published this article have their way, public education would be improved by reducing the hiring of non-important staff(non-teachers), increasing the amount of teachers hired, paying them better, and ensuring that they’ve been taught engaging and helpful teaching methods, rather than the rote memorization they go for right now.
by shagggz
No more Drudge posts, please.
by Bri
We ‘ll put it to a vote. I say please inform us Amara. I don’t care if it’s a Drudge report. Everyones views are biased, which includes yours, and Amara’s.
by Editor
Above my pay grade.
by michael
It’s not bad teaching, its bad parenting.
by Vernon
No, Michael, it’s an obsolete process that needs stem to stern overhaul.
by TallDave
It may not be “bad” teaching but really, how much difference does a teacher actually make? All the anecotes about “this one teacher I had who really inspired me” ignore the cold reality that all the information is in the textbooks and all the motivation is in the student, the teacher is essentially a babysitter with an answer key. If this weren’t true, home-schooling by people with no education background wouldn’t be so successful.
Most teachers cannot pas basic competency tests with simple algebra problems. The few that can tend to leave the profession when they figure the game is stacked for seniority and political gameplaying, not competence.
by TallDave
I have to add, it drives me crazy that teachers’ unions consistently make both these mutually exclusive arguments:
“We are powerless to educate children if the parents don’t motivate them.”
“Teachers are extremely important because they motivate children to learn.”
by Lord Penguin
The figure for teaching staff seems off. I think it might be the amount we’re paying in wages rather than the amount of employees. The percentage increase I got from the National Center for Education Statistics is around 180%. It’s still a significant amount, but it also includes special education staffing and similar services.
IQ has been steadily rising over the past several decades, at a rate of 3 points per year. It is re-normalized to fit the bell curve with a median of 100 every so often, but on older tests young people typically score well above 100.
by Lord Penguin
I forgot to include the website:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
by Robert Pike
Calhoun said it decades ago; The more crowded we get, the more pathological we become – the harder it is to teach and be taught. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1501789/). Private schools or Charters offers the wealthy (or those with ample free time) an option; but those whose parents have to work and can’t do volunteer hours must endure the public school. The Charters have quietly adapted Dunbars’ “Rule of 150″ keeping classes small, and schools small…allowing them to pay lower salaries to happier, more successful teachers. Until the public schools get the message that “smaller is better” and until society reaches its’ carrying capacity (or voluntary family planning finally takes hold) the public schools will suffer, the privates and charters will flourish.
by Spikosauropod
As someone who is intimately involved with the process, I can pretty much explain the problem.
1. We teach students nonsense and we teach then in nonsensical ways.
2. Schools of education are only interested in instilling a particular world view.
3. Teachers unions are only interested in maintaining control.
The solution is simple: replace our public education system with a voucher system. Certify schools on the basis of whether or not their students can demonstrate certain well-defined competencies. The competencies can be designed by top-rated colleges based on their own needs.
by Chris
What exactly is this post doing on kurzweilai.net? And comments from the editor that “the private sector isn’t wasting my money”? How does this have anything to do with accelerating technological change? Please stick to relevant postings, and save the personal political views for HuffPost or the Drudge Report.
by Editor
The issue of quality education is highly relevant to the future of technological change and we will continue to look at alternate solutions, especially ones that focus on online education as a replacement for incompetent and wasteful traditional education. As for politics and politicians, I consider them blocks to information flow that we work around.
by de Broglie
I agree. I think is very pertinent.
by de Broglie
Sorry. I think this is very pertinent. I was not trying to be an example of a student of a bad school system. ;)
by Bri
There have been many postings of the accelerating changes to education. What you can easily get out of online college courses, is different related to the quality of your public school education. Many articles have been written, stating the poor quality of public school education, in prepping a student for higher education. The personal political view seems to be yours. I certainly don’t agree with you. If you find it so offensive, maybe you should skip reading it. I don’t read all the articles. Many don’t reflect my views. I write about that, not censoring Amaras behavior. The last time I checked, that’s her job. I call Shawn Hannity, pawn insanity, Rush Limbough, gush limbo, Bob Grant, snob rant, Mark Levine , snark unleavened bread ( the bread of haste and half baked), but I still listen to them. Everyone distorts things with there perspective. To be well rounded you have to suspend your beliefs and try to see the other viewpoints. I may laugh at them and their spin, but a huge portion of people listen to them and take it hook line and sinker. ( Though I don’t know why). There was a great Twilight Zone episode, where a bitter man wished that everyone was just like him. What he got was an endless taste of his own bitterness. Everyone berated him in the same fashion as he would berate everyone else. Of and by the way Amara. I loved the political postings you gave us, even if I would never vote for either of those clowns. It’s a shame we don’t have good choices for political office. It probably has to do with both their educations. Sheltered and naive!!!!
by Brian
This study fails the first test of skeptical and critical thinking. Do the funders/executier of the study have a stake in its outcome? The answer is yes, as this foundation has a long history of providing biased research against public education. An unbiased source would be more persuasive.
by Editor
OK, I’ll see what we can dig up. Suggestions welcome.
by Editor
Brian, this appears to be an objective study that reaches similar conclusions and presents a lot of specific data: “Throwing Money at Education Isn’t Working,” http://sbs2.eresources.ws/doclib/201209111_SBSEducationReport911.pdf. What do you think? It’s still based on the traditional educational system, so it doesn’t offer any radically new ideas that I could see in a quick scan.
by peterthelibrarian
I’m highly skeptical of this article for a couple of reasons- they provide highly selective statistics, which leads me to believe they’re cherry picking to prove their point.
For instance, they neglect to mention that the dollar figures in the figure above which purport to show a huge increase in per pupil spending are in current dollars, meaning that they are not inflation-adjusted. Adjusted for inflation, the $5,001 average per pupil in 1970 would be $26,724.67 in 2007 dollars. Thus, there was actually a huge DECREASE in spending over that time period.
My second reason for skepticism is that the source article for this was written by a group that seeks to marginalize public schools in favor of voucher programs for parochial schools and charter schools run by for-profit companies.
I could go on, but I’m on break at work.
by peterthelibrarian
My source (and the apparent source for the chart above) is here: (very large pdf) http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf
inflation calculator here: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
I surmise that they (The Friedman Foundation) chose the Gates Foundation version of that chart as a way to imply that their ideas have broad support. Clearly, they deliberately chose to use it out of context. I also noticed that on their site they listed several related stories which were clearly summations of their news release in various outlets. Not so illuminating, but it looks impressive. Ah, the joys of propaganda…
by TallDave
Um, no. Spending is up 2x even adjusted for inflation. Your inflation multiplier is way off.
In my state, by 2014 we will be spending more on teacher/administrator pensions than on education itself. We have one guy (in Niles IL, GIYF) who is getting a $27M pension. You’d have to be CEO of WalMart to get a pension like that in the private sector.
Face reality: the public education system is little more than a system for transferring money from taxpayers to unaccountable overpaid educrats while indoctrinating youth to the political beliefs of the teachers’ unions. They should shut the entire thing down and rebuild from scratch, using the private sector.
by phwest
Seriously? These numbers are obviously inflation adjusted. Otherwise your calculation implies teachers are working for a third of what they made in the 70s (admin notwithstanding the bulk of education costs are teachers) given the drop in student-teacher ratios over the time period. I can guarantee you teachers weren’t making the equivalent of 6 figure salaries in the 70s.
by Bennie Beaver
I grew up in the 40s and 50s and come to believe that one of the greatest problems with education in America has been cultural change. And one grandiose reason for cultural change in America has been an invasion of other cultures that have been slow to assimilate. I see nothing wrong with orderly and legal immigration, but politicians and big business encouraged a flood of immigration to keep up with outsourced jobs to slave labor nations like China.
Once America embraced outsourcing to slave labor, businesses had little choice but to immigrate workers to lower their cost. Again politicians closed their eyes to the devastating effects it would have on our culture…schools and streets full of drugs and crime to cultural barriers to communications. The public coffers have been spending billions of dollars to correct these problems created by politicians and big business. We saved on one end while we lost on the other; and no, it’s not the same as large immigration populations of the past. They experienced far greater pressures to change, but not only that, America was at a different and growing time in its history. Immigration should be thoughtfully legal and orderly administered. Immigrants need more time to assimilate before more immigration. Those hard working illegal immigrants here in America are not at fault. the fault lies with the American public and politician we elected to office who have aided and abetted the problem. That is why I agree with President Obama’s “Dream Act”.
All of my life since the 40s to today I’ve witnessed debate after debate proudly touting a solution to education and nothing has clearly improved…America has gotten worse. So I ask, if this sudden upending of our culture is not a result of too much basic cultural change, then what? I agree that science and technology have contributed to change, but that kind of change is expected. I don’t believe that science and technology are our problem. The greater problem is a result of immigrating cultures that don’t understand what has made America one of the most powerful nations on earth. Often they come here and seem to be trying to make America like the failed nation they fled. (Science and technology has been one of America’s strengths over the years).
If America slows down immigration of so many uneducated and poor, and increase the immigrations of the educated who can contribute to our success in the interim and long run, we will revive. We must give those large numbers of illegal immigrates a chance to assimilate and they will properly contribute to our culture as they enter the melting pot. I don’t think we want to build a large flotilla of ship to sail out into the world and bring all the poor and disenfranchise to America even if we might like to. We would be destroy by such an effort. If we remain strong we will be more able to go out in the world to help others in their home lands. quality over quantity will keep America strong and able to help others.
That’s just one idea I want to express. I understand that others have their opinions too. And yes, America is a big country and may survive large waves of illegal immigration as well as immigration of seriously different cultures, but is that a way to keep America strong and able to go out into the world with a helping hand.
That, I believe, is at least one problem with America’s educational system.
by Bri
The schools that I attended while growing up, had many bad teachers. There wasn’t a single immigrant. In my fith grade class, I had terrible conflicts with the teacher. A new neighbor moved in up the street. On her fist day in class, the teacher made her cry, because she didn’t know her 9 times tables. I’ll never forget the way she yelled at poor Theresa. The gadget liked coming up from behind a student and bobbing them on the head with a websters dictionary. She claimed that me and some friends of mine were trouble makers. We would all go down to the guidance councilors for several hours each day as an evaluation. It was the first time that I was given a full psychological test, by the school psychologist. It came back, saying I had a college level vocabulary, a high IQ and was very well balanced. The teacher quit two years later. My 7th grade English teacher used to seduce certain students. My mother actually treated one of her ex students for PTSD. She would score my tests lower, so that I might need extra ” help” after class. At thirteen years old, I told my mother what was going on. I was evaluated by the school psychologist again. I despised almost every year of my public education. My parents wanted to send me to a private school. I told them no, that as far as I could figure, most adults are screwed up. I haven’t changed my opinion on that. If anything, I’ve learned how to categorize the different maladies that people suffer from. The way I see it, our only hope is in an AI robotic personal teacher. Things like SIRI and Watson will evolve into this. On line education isrelatively unmonitored. Most people need mentoring.
by Mr.X
@ Bri: Why do you think most people would need monitoring?
by January
As Mark Twain wrote, “”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Middle management is an issue in American science and business as well as education. However, one expects interpretations based on Heritage Foundation information to be skewed toward criticism of the public sector without mention of the private sector.
by Editor
The private sector isn’t wasting my money.
by Derek
The Private Sector wastes money all the time as long as the GOV is cutting the check. Shifting education to the private sector will only result in bribes being paid and contracts being handed out. Instead of money to administrators, we will have money into the pockets of the school owners and politicians.
What education needs isn’t privatization, but rather cuts at the top, starting with the DOE and then going down to the district levels and then the schools. Schools and districts employee numerous useless people, curriculum directors, district lawyers, etc….. and these people need to be let go. Then relevant classes need to be taught with the money saved, classes like shop and auto-mechanic training, computer programming. etc…..
Of course none of that can happen as long as the DOE is issuing decrees.
by de Broglie
The public sector has almost no incentive to use resources more efficiently. In contrast, the private sector has a very large incentive to increase efficiency.
by Joe Cash
The private sector wastes all kinds of resources, like clean air, clean water, and the trust of the public with their Madison Avenue self-promotion techniques which use psychology and other forms of technology to alter public opinion. The problem with the educational system may be the same problem with many very large systems: they may be unaviodably difficult to manage because of unavoidable inefficiencies due complexity resulting from their large size. The voucher system is bound to provide unequal access to education for the rich. It disgusts me that people are so willing to sacrifice justice to “Freedom”, as if freedom were some kind of god or goddess (note the idol dedicated to liberty in New York Harbor). You may be able to manipulate public opinion to promote consent to this, but the inequality will still make it unjust.
by Bri
No, most of the time they are wasting someone else’s money.
by TallDave
The major difference is that in the private sector it is possible to go bankrupt.
In the public sector, they just get more money from taxpayers. It’s pretty easy to get people to vote to put a gun to someone else’s head to get more money “for the children,” who in actuality see no benefit.
by GatorALLin
..this video is a must see!
http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/3kGDh2Ny-d2qA2RiQ
check this out also http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/
by GatorALLin
here is the must see full DVD “waiting for superman”. you can buy on amazon for example. Best documentary I have seen in 3 years. A Must see if you care anything about US education and how to fix it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Q6D28C?ie=UTF8&tag=participroduc-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B003Q6D28C
by Derek
The video is misleading on several levels. Yes a school which cherry picks its students can do better than a school that takes everyone.
Big shocker.
by TallDave
The private schools have responded to this by saying “Fine, give us your worst students.” No public school will take them up on this.
by DeBee Corley
No kidding. My local high school has 6 (six) vice principles.
Then, as a volunteer, they expect me to pay for my own “clearance”.
And, If I don’t check out at the end of the day, I am only credited with 15 minutes of “volunteer” time.
Of course the company I retired from will grant money to the school, based on the time I spent as a volunteer.
To add further insult, this high school has no programming classes. The programming teacher was the mathematics teacher, but quit doing the programming classes because it just doubled his workload. Of course, I would only apply for grants for computer equipment. So we have lose, lose, lose, lose.
But teaching to the “no child left behind” test, has raised the scores for one year, then the tests have become more complex, and the scores have dropped.
Interesting times.
by gaoptimize
As soon as there was Federal involvement in schools through the un-Constitutional Department of Education, this outcome was inevitable. Bloated from feeding at the public trough, the unholly left-wing alliance between the teachers’ and public employee unions, and communist agitators ( http://rense.com/general32/americ.htm ) made growing the education bureaucracy at top priority. This was not a mistake or error. It was always part of the plan and it succeeded beyong their wildest dreams.
by Rob Larson
This is not surprising. Anyone familiar with the so-called Gammon’s Law could tell you the same. Dr. Gammon studied the NHS of the UK back in the 50′s. What he expected to find is that as money was added the the NHS, more patient beds would be found in hospitals, clinics, etc. What he found was that the support services like administrators were getting the bulk of the increases, instead of the money going to making healthcare more accessible. Milton Friedman noted much the same thing over 20 years ago when looking at our school system.
by Kelly Balthrop
Since it does not say adjusted for inflation I have to assume it is not. In that same period the cpi has gone up 200%. If you apoply that to the graph the line gooes in the opposite direction.
by Laura C.
Usually one should assume a reputable study is adjusted for inflation.
Apparently this one was, as here’s the raw data:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
by peterthelibrarian
See comment above. This chart was NOT adjusted for inflation; rather, the Census Bureau source for the data is clearly labeled “Current Spending Per Pupil for Public Elementary-Secondary School Systems”
Current Dollars = nominal value at the time, as opposed to Real or Constant Dollars, which would be inflation-adjusted.
by TallDave
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Spending has doubled even when adjusted for inflation. Even reputable left-wing sources like Politifact agree on this.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/politifact-florida-michelle-rhee-right-about-per-pupil-spending-wrong/1152830
by Andy
Of developed countries in the early 1950′s American students ranked first in math and science. Today they rank in the mid twenties. That is more telling than the wasted money on education. The increased funding was on brainwashing, not education. The Prussian “education” system was was first imported to United States in 1850. It was fully implemented in the twentieth century.
by Mr.X
Blabla, yeah the Prussians are at fault.
The early 50ies?Maybe the war interrupted the education of pupils.
by GAUSS
A solid question, Mr. X. Too often we forget that this country has been at war almost nonstop for the better part of a century.
by Mr.X
Well, the real question is why you don’t realize that the war hit the other countries at home, while your people basically, aside from some aquintance or fam member joining the army, wasn’t affected in daily life.
by Mr.X
*s.But, that doesn’t mean this has to be the reason, of course.
by Bri
My grandfather ran an army base stateside during the war. Yea, our lands weren’t bombed to smithereens, but the war had it’s toll over here. Anyone who glorifies war is deluded. Not only did we not start the war, we didn’t want to join the war. If we didn’t, old uncle Adolf would have owned half of the world. He missed victory in Russia by a month. Once winter set in, the supply lines were impossible to maintain. Blitzkrieg was very effective. It’s the reason that everything was destroyed, not allied bombing.
by Mr.X
Wow, you know nothing about strategy.First, there was nothing like a Blitzkrieg doctrince, that really was used.Read up on Liddel Hart and how he tried to gain eternal glory for his “inventions”.Second: I didn’t say allied bombing was at fault, but foreign occupation tends to make living kinda hard (disrupting the economy etc, and that at a time at which people were much poorer anyway).Third: Your country engaged for a long time in doings that you yourself would answer with war.Fourth: Stalins counter push (watch battle plan, blitzkrieg) would have destroyed our armies alone.
Fifth: If Benito wouldn’t have felt the need for balkan entanglement, our time-schedule would have looked differently.
Nonetheless, speedy advance, what you might call Blitzkrieg, was needed to swallow the economies of the vanquished as intact as possible.”Blitzkrieg” is fundamentally about conquering material.
Bombing for destroyings sake wasn’t even possible at the beginning for the Axis, since we didn’t have enough material compared to the allies.France’s forces were much bigger in every aspect, alone.
I rest my case: Going to school in a bombed Germany, occupied France or even worse, Poland at that time was quite a different experience as going to school in the USA where the war was confined to some other country.
So, tell me about your horrible toll, if you want.
Ps: Why did you digress- you post was kinda offtopic.I never played the blame game, just stated some facts.
by Bri
In the long run, this is not a good place to debate WWII. I’m very aware of the damage that the war caused on all fronts. As I said, we were affected in very harsh ways to. Nothing in comparison to what others went through, but it was no picnic over here. I only wanted to say that, if we could have avoided the war, we would have. America has it’s own problems. Education is only one of them. Sorry for the hardships of the war. It took it’s toll on everyone.
by Mr.X
Ps: Have a nice day:)
And ignore my stark rhetorics, if they upset you (I don’t think so).Knowing nothing -of course- was probably an exaggeration.
Still, Bomber Harris et al destroyed certainly more than amored breakthroughs :)
Anyway: I look forward/backward to hear about the taken toll.I have a strong suspicion that you will support my case.
by Andy
Prussian government didn’t export their education system. The United States government modeled U.S. education to suit the government’s agenda and corporate agenda. The problem the Prussian military had with soldiers running away from battles was remedied by an education system that molded youth to be obedient to authority. Google “Milgram obedience experiment”. Also, “The Ultimate History Lesson”.
by TallDave
You could blame the Spartans if you like — the first public school systems were modeled on them.