Wagging The Cash Cow
By Mitch Berg
In the public school district where I grew up, and where my Dad taught most of his career, I don’t remember a lot of “administrators”; I think the Superintendent had a secretary; each school had a principal, the high school and junior highs had assistants, each school had a secretary; there were a couple of guidance counselors, and a couple of special ed people. If there were thirty paid staff in the whole districåt that weren’t teachers, I’d be amazed.
Thing have changed; Tom Steward notes the changes in the form of a pop quiz:
A quick true or false pop quiz based on a surprising new education study provides some clues to why K-12 public school funding constitutes the biggest line item in Minnesota’s state budget again this year.
1: Minnesota public schools employ more administrators and other non-teaching staff than classroom teachers.
True. Minnesota public schools employ 3,000 more non-classroom staff than teachers.
2: The growth in non-teaching staff has outpaced the increase in students by more than 50 percent.
True. While the student population increased by eight percent, the growth rate of non-teaching personnel exploded by 68 percent between 1992-2009.
3: Minnesota schools could pay their teachers more with the cost savings from “extra” non-teaching staff.
True. Classroom teachers could earn $15,000 more every year with the savings.
Those answers put Minnesota in a class of 21 states flagged as “top-heavy” in the number of non-teaching staff employed in public schools in a new report, “The School Staffing Surge: Decades of Employment Growth in America’s Public Schools, Part II.”
This has been creeping up on everyone. Remember the district I grew up in? Not long after I graduated, the number of admins started growing. They soon had their own building (a disused storefront). Then another bigger building – which, my dad noted after decades of teaching summer school in a room that felt like a toaster oven, had air conditioning.
Education administration has been a booming business. That sounds so cynical when I put it that way. That’s intentional:
“We have increased employment in public schools at a much greater rate than the increase in students, and the most disconcerting part of that trend is that we’ve hired more administrators and other staff than teachers,” said Ben Scafidi, author of the report for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
I’ll add emphasis:
Minnesota public schools have put 20,000 more “non-teaching personnel” on the payroll than the number needed to keep pace with the growth in students between 1992-2009, according to the analysis of data reported by state schools to the US Department of Education. Overall, non-teaching staff outnumbers teachers in the state’s public schools by about 3,000 employees.
And if the response to this is “we need the administrators to deal with the bureaucracy involved in education…” – well, the followup question asks itself, doesn’t it?
March 4th, 2013 at 7:11 am
Those numbers are misleading, because a fair number of teachers are working in non-teaching positions. They are either teaching a light load, or not teaching at all, while spending most of their time as grant administrators, regulatory compliance supervisors, etc.
But, because they have teaching licenses, they usually show up in the numbers as teachers, not as administrators, even though they aren’t teaching.
March 4th, 2013 at 9:13 am
As a spouse of one of those “non-teachers”, I concur it is crazy (or cray, cray as Mitch would have it) how many people in the school district where she works are classed as non-teachers.
According to the districts website, the district has 12,500 K-12 students and a total of 60,000 ‘learners’ counting Community Ed. It has 1,450 staff and 45% of the staff are classed as non-teaching. A true ratio of staff to students is difficult because the district doesn’t break out staff by devoted to K-12 versus those who teach Community Ed.
My spouse works with kids who have special needs. Some simply have ADD or ADHD and need some assistance in staying on task otherwise they become disruptive. It is a help to the teachers as one kid causing disruptions holds back the other 20-25. Some need a lot of assistance due to severe Autism or other mental or physical handicap that requires significant help. This is all state mandated due to our concerned elders from that wonderful time in the ’70’s when ‘moderate’ Republicans (aka – at least by the Star Tribune reporters and editors as “good” Republicans who may or may not be dead yet) got together with DFL’rs “for the children”. The outcome of their mandate is that each child in the program has their own adult (with a modest salary and benefits along with union dues) who walks them to their classes, helps them when they struggle with teacher instructions and generally is side by side with them as they go through their school day.
There are also a lot of “Specialists” who help the English as a second language kids; help the kids whose parents decided that teaching the kids their colors, numbers and letters was something best left to others; and my personal favorites, the non-teaching staff who are there because either they have unique skills in coaching football/hockey/other high profile sport, or the union contract requires a warm, dues paying body in the building anytime the building is being used, school function or not.
To those of you who want to change this system I have two words for you: Good Luck.
March 4th, 2013 at 9:43 am
National public school spending per pupil in the U.S. is about $14,000. Average class size, IIRC, is 23. For $320,000 per classroom, you could pay a teacher $100k, buy iPads for every student, cover overhead for building and heat and still have a bit of a “profit” to go into extracurriculars and funding for future projects. That sounds like it would be good for students; too bad it’s not about the students.
March 4th, 2013 at 11:21 am
When my father started teaching at a Major Midwestern University in 1969 there was one staffer for 20+ professors. When he retired in 2010 there were 4 staffers for each professor.
When my mother started teaching high school at a suburb of a major Midwestern city at the same time, there were 4 teachers for each support person (bus drivers skewed the numbers); she was soon the union president. By the time she left there were 2 staffers for each teacher, and she was staunchly anti-union.
The biggest commonality between the two? The Feds began to shovel money into education at the time and they did to education what they do to themselves: they added ever more layers of bureaucracy and red tape, reduced flexibility for the practitioners, and wasted ever more money. Thank you NEA and Jimmy Carter, you’ve done the country arguably more harm with your educational policies than any other president in the last 150 years..
March 4th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
this is why charter schools are so important; they demonstrate that the cost structure of the standard government schools is insane. Which is, of course, why the NEA and AFT come out against them with daggers drawn.
March 4th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Adminstrators most certainly…but on top of that take into account that Tom Do(o)h(er) can constantly use expensive television airtime to tell us how underfunded education is…and givene that over 50 officers and emplyees of Education Minnesota pull six figure incomes from that union.
The only ones can straight faced claim education is under funded are professional liars (like union officers and politicians).
March 4th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
…Oh, and all the superintendents in the metro area get a healthy six figure incomes along with other perks
March 4th, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Nerdbert, every month when I pay my $460 Univ of Minnesota student loan payment, I think about how much money they piss away there. And its not just $3700 orgasam conferences, but the educrates there. And the things education does that has little or nothing to do with preparing students for further education or the workforce (unless you are preparing to be a community organizer or whatever it is that Sandra Fluke does).
March 4th, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Adrian…..with all the uphevel in Wisconsin last year, someone got a hold of the pay for WEAC (wisc public teachers union). Nice cash. And when Walker (and Wisconsin as a whole), won, after WEAC blew all of their money trying to defeat Walker, they had to do layoffs. None of the top WEAC officials took pay cuts. Instead they fired the worker bees.
March 4th, 2013 at 7:38 pm
Is it possible that the lack of high quality teacher candidates and subsequent lower quality teaching staff necessitates administrators and other non-teaching professionals to be on hand to keep things running smoothly? Things that teachers used to do before a lack of teaching talent and union prohibitions prevented them from doing?
Should I have said “educators” instead of “teachers”, or is that term only necessary when contracts are being negotiated?
March 5th, 2013 at 2:14 am
Folks:
You want crazy how about this meeting I had with a member of the Minneapolis School Board I didn’t expect to have. Years ago (and based on the numbers I’m quoting you will see it was years ago) I showed up at a Minneapolis group I was a member of and was surprised to see that a Minneapolis School Board member was there to ask for support for their property tax levy to be maintained at 16 students per class room to have a great education.
I looked at the school board member and asked, “So I’m correct that we’re currently spending $10,000 per student now?”
The school board member had a puzzled look on her face and looked at her aide who nodded her head. “Yes,” the school board member said.
“And a current teacher is making something like $60,000 per year?” I asked.
The school board member had a puzzled look on her face and looked at her aide who nodded her head. “Yes,” the school board member said.
“So if we’re already spending $160,000 for the class and only pay the teacher $60,000 instead of doing this tax increase why don’t you apply some of that other $100,000 being wasted to the class room?”
The school board member looked at me with total shock on her face. She tried to say that there was no waste and that this levy was meant to give Minneapolis great class rooms.
Keep in mind when this levy was created which has never been repealed in any future votes the kids who were in kindgerten and first grade at the time have now graduated a few years ago (if they graduated). Does anybody think Minneapolis is turing out great edcuation. Because of the attitude of that school board member I can see why it hasn’t.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN