As we gear up for another legislative session, I predict we will hear more than once that Minnesota’s public school system “just needs more money” to improve its lackluster academic achievement.
But as American Experiment has documented for years, we do not underinvest in our public schools. In fact, spending on E-12 public education is Minnesota’s biggest general fund expenditure. For the 2024-2025 biennium, E-12 education makes up nearly 35 percent of all general fund dollars and is expected to push nearly 39 percent for the 2026-2027 biennium. The system doesn’t lack funding. Indeed, Minnesota K-12 state revenue per student — adjusted for inflation — is up 31 percent since 2002 (from 2002-2020). Minnesota K-12 current spending per student has jumped 22 percent over that same time period.
Where is the biggest growth happening? Among non-teaching staff and administrative bloat.
District administrative staff in Minnesota public schools is up over 132 percent (132.1 percent) since 2000. Principal and assistant principal growth over the same time period is up 50 percent. Compare those increases to student growth and teacher growth at 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
Growth in Administrative Staff, Principals, Teachers, and Students
in Minnesota Public Schools (% Change Since 2000)
Despite public school enrollment declining for the past four consecutive years, Minnesota public schools have continued to hire non-teaching staff. Since fall 2019 (pre-COVID), the number of district administrative staff has ticked up just under 4 percent. Principal and assistant principal growth is over 7 percent. But public school enrollment has dropped around 2.6 percent over that same time period.
Put simply, even when student populations are dropping, our public school system has been increasing non-teaching staff.
And these non-teaching staff aren’t cheap. According to the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), the average superintendent salary for the 2023-24 school year was $158,188 — up 14.6 percent from the average of $137,977 during the 2019-20 school year. The average middle school principal salary for the 2023-24 school year came in at $134,542.
Because administrative staff and principals are ostensibly hired to support teachers, increasing the number of these positions doesn’t often raise red flags. But there is no evidence in the aggregate that increasing staffing improves student academic outcomes. And there is concern that such growth in non-teaching positions takes away limited dollars that could potentially go toward teacher salaries. The average teacher salary increased 3.5 percent from the 2019-20 school year to the 2023-24 school year, coming in at $72,430. Total spending on district level administration statewide is up 24 percent since fiscal year 2019, compared to 11.4 percent growth in spending on regular instruction.
For Minnesota, academic proficiency in reading and math is below 50 percent for the second consecutive year in a row. Reading and math averages on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are the lowest they have been in decades.
We see this same admin growth phenomena nationally. Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Culture Project, shares the numbers in the National Review:
The latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that student enrollment increased by about 5 percent between 2000 and 2022. The number of teachers employed by the public-school system increased twice as fast, by 10 percent over the same period. The number of principals and assistant principals grew by 39 percent.
Administrative staff increased by 95 percent, or about 19 times the rate of student enrollment growth since 2000.
…
Kennesaw State University professor Ben Scafidi found that administrators and non-teaching staff increased by more than seven times the growth in student enrollment between 1950 and 2015.The public-school system is more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids.
Consider the dollars at play if non-teaching personnel had grown at the same rate as the growth in students all these years. What kind of opportunity cost is involved with this increase in non-instructional staffing positions?