The dismal productivity trend for K-12 public schools and how to improve it.

AuthorScafidi, Benjamin
PositionCritical essay

Over the past decade, Richard Vedder has become widely known in academic, policy, and media circles for his work on productivity in higher education. In fact, however, Vedder (1996, 2000; Vedder and Hall 2000) studied issues in K-12 education before turning to higher education with his 2004 publication, Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs So Much. This article highlights Vedder's contribution to debate on productivity in American public K-12 education and updates his findings with more recent data. It finds that the productivity problem in K-12 public education is actually worse than Vedder suggests is the case for higher education. This article also reconsiders a solution Vedder proposed to ameliorate the K-12 productivity problem--parental choice combined with the conversion of individual public schools into autonomous, employee-owned enterprises.

Richard Vedder and the Economics of Education

One can think of productivity as outputs divided by inputs. Vedder, in his work on higher education, has been concerned about both sides of the productivity equation--that is, higher costs and stagnant or declining output. He adopted a similar approach in his earlier work on K-12 education. In 1996, he wrote a report for the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University, entitled "School Daze: Productivity Decline and Lackluster Performance in U.S. Education." That report showed the tremendous increases in public school staffing that occurred from 1950 to 1993. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1950, there were just over 5 full-time equivalent (FTE) public school employees per 100 students, while by 1993, there were more than 11 FTE school employees per 100 students. Vedder showed that this staffing surge was disproportionately due to increased employment of those who were not lead teachers. As Vedder put it, "While the number of administrators per pupil rose about 50 percent, the big increase was in support staff and in quasi-instructional staff (e.g. teacher aides, guidance counselors)" (Vedder 1996: 4-5).

Using student test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Scholastic Aptitude Test, Vedder also showed that the output of K-12 public schools--that is, average student performance on standardized exams--either decreased very slightly (1971 to 1992) or increased by about 2 percent (1978 to 1992) during the time period under study. However, this stagnant or slightly higher output occurred at the same time as a dramatic increase in real public school spending and staffing.

The Modern Staffing Surge in K-12 Public Education

According to data available from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased 96 percent, while the number of FTE school employees increased 386 percent (see Figure 1). American public schools hired personnel at a rate four times faster than the growth in student numbers over that period. However, the numbers above obscure important information regarding the nature of the long-term and dramatic increases in staffing. One can place public school employees into two categories--lead teachers and "other" staff (administrators, teacher aides, counselors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and so on). Between 1950 and 2009, teaching personnel grew by 252 percent while administrators' and other staff numbers increased 702 percent. That means the rise in "other" staff was more than seven times faster than tire increase in students.

Given that public school personnel increased at a much faster rate than students, staff to student ratios declined significantly between 1950 and 2009, as shown in Figures 2 and 3. (1) These trends continued over the past generation. As Figure 4 shows, tire number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 17 percent between FY 1992 and FY 2009, while the number of FTE school employees increased by 39 percent. Teachers saw a 32 percent rate of growth, while administrators and other staff experienced a 46 percent rise. That upsurge in nonteaching personnel was 2.3 times greater than the increase in students over the same 18-year period. For teachers, growth was almost twice as large as the increase in students.

In the mid-1990s, Vedder was not the only one warning about too much central administration in K-12 public schools. For example, two well-known public schooling advocates wrote in 1995 that, "educational bureaucracies become endlessly expanding financial sinkholes that eat up resources and create only mischief and red tape" (Berliner and Biddle 1995: 257). And, of course, those words were written before much of the increase in administration and other non-teaching personnel depicted in Figure 4 took place.

Did No Child Left Behind Make Us Do It?

The expansion in public school staffing between FY 1992 and FY 2009--including tire relatively large increase in nonteaching personnel--cannot be blamed on the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. During the pre-NCLB period, FY 1992 to FY 2001, public schools saw their student populations grow 13 percent while school personnel numbers increased 29 percent. The number of teachers increased 23 percent, about 1.75 times the increase in students, while the number of administrators and other staff rose by 37 percent--almost 3 times the increase in student numbers. From the school year in which NCLB was passed (FY 2002) until FY 2009, tire number of students rose 3 percent while the number of public school teachers and administrators both increased about 7 percent. The primary difference between the NCLB era and the preceding time period is that the trend toward faster growth in nonteaching staff than in teaching staff was halted.

Although Staffing in U.S. Public Schools Dramatically Increased, Student Achievement Did Not

Is there evidence that increased public school staffing and disproportionate spending on non teaching personnel improved student achievement in the United States? (2) After three decades of decline, America's public high school graduation rate has increased slightly over die past generation. Using the most accurate measure of the on-time public high school graduation rate, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that the rate increased from 74.2 percent to 74.7 percent between FY 1992 and FY 2008. (3) However, the public high school graduation rate in 2008 remained slightly below where it was four decades earlier (Heckman and LaFontaine 2010).

Moreover, since 1970, tire financial returns in the labor market have declined in relative terms for high school dropouts. This alone should have led to an increase in the public high school graduation rate. Yet, in fact, public high school graduation rates fell over a time period when the economic incentive for students to graduate rose.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a series of exams given to samples of students ages 9, 13, and 17. As shown in Figure 5, scores on the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment have not increased over the time period under examination, during which public school staffing ballooned. (4)

It may be argued drat staffing in American public schools needed to increase from its level several decades ago. Prior to the racial integration of public schools, many African American children had little or no taxpayer funds spent in their segregated schools. Second, students in less wealthy school districts often had much less spent on their education than students in more affluent areas. Third, students with special needs often had relatively few resources devoted to them. Court cases and changes in federal and state policy led to very large increases in public school staffing in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. All this being said, however, student achievement in American public schools did not improve when there were large increases in staffing. Therefore, with productivity defined as...

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