Guessing Where School Bailout II Money Will Go

 President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan want Congress to pass another public-school bailout totaling $23 billion to save hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs. But maybe bureaucracy, not budget shortfalls, is ultimately to blame for making teaching risky business. According to Duncan’s own department, the ranks of non-teaching public-school and district staff have swelled in recent decades. Thanks to the Goldwater Institute’s Matthew Ladner for presenting this national trend with some very handy graphs. The table below ranks states according to their latest teacher to non-teacher employee ratios, also based on data from Duncan’s department (states ranked highest have more teachers compared to non-teachers on public school/district staff; states ranked lowest have the least teachers compared to non-teachers on public school/district staff.) So South Carolina does best with 2.5 teachers for every non-teacher on staff; while Virginia does the worst for having half a teacher for every non-teacher on staff. (Such bizarre percentages happen because of how public schools and districts define who is a “teacher”).

Some people may think that pouring more money into a government-run schooling system that puts a premium on non-instructional functions over teaching will reverse this trend. So the table below also includes per-pupil expenditures reported by ED. Total per-pupil expenditures include politically sensitive figures such as capital and interest on school debt, so they’re the highest (keep these figures in mind next time a bond comes up for a vote). They also include instruction, transportation, food service, support staff, administration, and general operation and maintenance. Current per-pupil expenditures include all those spending items except capital and interest on school debt, so they’re lower. The table isolates instruction expenditures, which are lowest of all.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced plans to double federal “family involvement” funding to $270 million. Why not simply put parents in charge of their children’s existing education dollars and let them be truly involved by picking their children’s schools? If the government-run schooling bureaucracy had to answer to them, then maybe the teacher and instruction spending columns below would be a whole lot bigger.