Public schools are hiring — but most new staff aren’t classroom teachers, concludes a new EdChoice report.
“Non-teachers have been hired at an alarmingly high rate,” said the report’s author, Ben Scafidi, a professor of economics and director of the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University.
Between 1950 and 2015, the number of full-time teachers increased nearly two and a half times as quickly as the increase in students, which reduced class sizes significantly. Over that same time period, the number of non-teachers—including administrators, social workers, counselors, reading and math coaches, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and curriculum specialists—increased more than seven times the increase in students.
During the Great Recession, when schools were forced to cut staff, teachers were more likely to be laid off than non-teachers, the report found.
With all the spending on support staff, “inflation-adjusted public school teacher salaries have fallen by 2 percent since 1992.”