“But how can there be one staff member for every seven students and yet classes as large as 34?”
Simply put, there are way more administrators, instructional aides, janitorial workers, and other support staff than teachers. Consider the growth of students, teachers and other staff since 1959, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics:Increase in… Student enrollment47%Teachers139%Principals and assistant principals210%Instruction coordinators631%Guidance counselors779%Instructional aides1,476%
In six decades, staff growth has bloated far beyond actual student growth. To put the numbers another way, in 1949, teachers were 70.3 percent of all school staff. In 2022, they were only 47.5 percent. Herein lies the explanation for the discrepancy: Districts hire lots of new people, while classes themselves remain the same size.
Any functional system requires non-instructional staff such as cafeteria workers, janitors, administrators, special education aides, and front office staff. But currently, the system resembles a construction site where one man digs with a shovel and five others mill about, shouting unsolicited advice.
If we line up staffing trends alongside two other trends, salary growth and academic outcomes, the correlations (or lack thereof) introduce compelling questions about the past six decades of policy decisions.
Regarding pay, in the same time that staff rosters ballooned, teacher salaries increased 38 percent in constant dollars (and per pupil expenditure over 300 percent). Instead of investing in teacher salaries, schools expanded personnel rolls. We could have instead kept staffing rosters lower — even increased classroom sizes slightly — and doubled or even tripled teacher pay.
