School Staffing Growing Significantly Faster Than Enrollment, Friedman Foundation Finds

Townhall.com ^ | October 29, 2012 | Kyle Olson

[Kaslin]

A new report by the Friedman Foundation shows hiring of administrative and support staff in government schools has grown seven times faster than student enrollment over the last several decades.

The group found:

“America’s K-12 public education system has experienced tremendous historical growth in employment, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 96 percent while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four times faster than the increase in students over that time period. Of those personnel, teachers’ numbers increased 252 percent while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 702 percent, more than seven times the increase in students.”

Report author Benjamin Scafidi also noted, “Compared to other nations’ schools, U.S. public schools devote significantly higher fractions of their operating budgets to non-teaching personnel—and lower portions to teachers.”

Unsustainable jobs programs promoted by the federal government have contributed to the problem and politicians have been more interested in job statistics in government schools than actually evaluating what those individuals were accomplishing.

Regardless, Friedman’s analysis shows once again that government schools have a spending problem, not a funding problem.

U.S. News and World Report attempted to obtain comment from the National Education Association, which represents a large chunk of non-instructional employees. The union declined. The magazine noted that the NEA website states, “Support professionals are woefully underpaid, often barely able to afford to live in the communities where they serve.”

Translation: quit your inconvenient analysis and keep the jobs money flowing.

[Big Horn]

You can’t buy a education.

[The_Reader_David]

A similar, but less extreme trend exists in higher education administration, but not in faculty, just administration: over the past 10 years at my university, we had enrollment go up about 20%, while the faculty shrank by 0.4% and the administration grew by 50%. (And, individual administrative salaries rose in real terms by about 10%, while faculty salaries barely kept pace with inflation over the same period.)

[Chode]

they aren't schools, they are RAT job programs come baby sitting services...

[RetiredTexasVet]

Ding-a-ling ... we have a winner. Finally someone figured out that we went from one dedicated professional teacher to 25 -35 children with a great deal of success to one totally disinterested union teacher, 5 teachers assistants to 10 -15 children with little or no success. From one principal, who sometimes subbed for missing teachers to one principal, 6 vice principals with each having a secretary and assistant.

[onevoter]

Sadly, a good friend works in a school district and, while this sounds like the schools are being self-indulgent, the increase in administration comes back to an significant increase in paperwork required by the government. Most schools now-days are understaffed for the workload - not the reverse, as this article would make you believe.

The other thing to be read into this is we have to consider what “Obamacare” would do to healthcare. No longer will it be enough to provide care, we will need untold reams of paperwork to be submitted to bloated government agencies created just for the purpose of “overseeing” this monstrosity. If you want to be scared straight, take a look at other government agencies - the reason the post office, schools, etc., are suffering is due to the bloated amounts of paperwork required to feed the machine.