Show Me the (Education) Money, Part IV!

We ’ve looked at the K-12 spending trends bothnationally and in restive states, broken down per-pupil expenditures intosmallerbits, and addedNorth Carolina. I had planned to finish this spending series with this post, but there are a lot of data to examine so I ’m going to put off conclusions to the next—and final—post. We now look at total enrollment and inflation-adjusted expenditures, and then at how staffing and inflation-adjusted teacher salaries have moved, both nationally and for our “hot” states. (On all charts, pay close attention to the horizontal axis. Many start with wider increments of time than they end.)NationalEnrollment: We saw a drop between the 1969-70 school year and 89-90, then enrollment lagrely plateaued between 05-06 and 13-14.Spending: Total public school revenues (standing in for spending because a longer trend is available) massively increased between 69-70 and 07-08 —the Great Recession—at which point they started dropping, but as of 14-15 they had essentially returned to pre-recession levels.   Teacher Salaries: Average salaries for public school teachers have been pretty stagnant since the late-1980s. The period we have been focusing on intensively —99-00 to 14-15—shows salaries peaking in 09-10, then failing to recover to levels at the beginning of that period.Teacher Staffing: Public schools have been hiring teachers faster than enrollment has risen, starting at 4.5 teachers per hundred students in 1970 and hitting 6.5 in ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs