Teacher pay is down as school spending goes up

Teacher pay fell from 2002 to 2022, even as school spending went up, writes Harvard's Paul E. Peterson in Education Next. Most of the new money was used to hire non-teachers, pay for benefits and fund retirees' pensions.

Photo: Parabol

As of 2024, total spending on public schools averaged $20,322 per pupil, 36 percent higher than in 2002 in inflation-adjusted dollars, federal data show. That ranged from $36,976 per student in New York to $11,937 in Idaho. Even after adjusting for the cost of living, there are big differences between high-spending and low-spending states, notes Peterson.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, enrollment rose 4.1 percent and staffing rose 22.8 percent, writes Peterson. That includes "large increases in the number of administrators, counselors, social workers, speech pathologists, and instructional aides." As a result, more than half of public school employees are not teachers.

Student achievement began falling in 2015, and got worse due to Covid disruptions. About one-fourth of students are chronic absentees. There's no evidence the extra social workers, counselors or aides have helped, writes Peterson. Federal pandemic aid "did very little to ameliorate the steep drop in student performance," research shows.

As enrollment declines, school districts need to "pay beginning teachers more," he writes. Districts should limit pension and health-care costs to put more money into classroom teaching now. And they should prioritize funding teachers over non-instructional activities.

In other news, the Chicago Teachers' Union continues to put its energies into international relations rather than teaching. The union posted on X:

In 2019, four CTU members crowd-funded a trip to Venezuela to visit the wonders of socialism. One teacher tweeted that she hadn't seen a single homeless person, perhaps not realizing that millions of starving Venezuelans had fled the country.

There was pushback.

“I am appalled a delegation representing themselves as CTU went to Venezuela, not to support striking teachers, not to object to human rights violations, but to go on what appears to be a state-chaperoned propaganda tour,” CTU teacher Karen Moody told the Chicago Tribune.