California Education Study Reveals Disturbing Trend: Over Five Year Period, Education Spending Increased While Contributions to Classrooms Declined

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California Education Study Reveals Disturbing Trend: Over Five-Year Period, Education Spending Increased While Contributions to Classrooms Declined

Scholars estimate that administrative dollars could have paid for 22,000 more classroom teachers

(July 22, 2010) Scholars from the Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute yesterday unveiled the findings of a study analyzing California public K-12 education expenditure patterns over a five-year period. The study concludes that, notwithstanding all the talk of “education budget cuts,” while school spending steadily increased between the 2003-04 and 2008-09 budget years, overall, direct classroom expenditures declined.

CalChamber President and CEO Allan Zaremberg

“In an era of scarce resources, we need to be more efficient with what is available and ensure that we get the greatest return on investment,” said Allan Zaremberg, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce. “We must work to get the maximum amount of our limited funds into the classroom because that will give us the biggest educational bang for our buck.”

“A failed educational system endangers our children, our economy and our business climate,” continued Zaremberg. “The demand for highly educated workers will continue to increase and the question is: will we be able to meet that need?" Our policy makers must use resources wisely and make investments in educating students — not in bureaucracies.”

The scholars from the Davenport Institute examined how money was spent and especially how that money was allocated. During the five year period, total school spending per capita (not including capital spending) increased by 25.8 percent, which was far greater than the growth in per capita personal income or inflation. During the same period, direct classroom expenditures statewide went from 59 percent of total expenditures to 57.8 percent. These statewide totals reflect a very wide range of variance among individual school districts, whose classroom expenditure ratios ranged from more than 70 percent to less than 45 percent (for the 52 selected districts that were examined).

Professor Steven B. Frates, Pepperdine Univeristy

Direct classroom expenditures include the following:

Salaries and benefits of teachers and instructional aides;
Textbooks and other books;
Materials and supplies related to instructional functions;
Professional and consulting services related to instructional functions.

Over the study period, statewide expenditures for teacher salaries and benefits declined from 50% of total statewide spending to 48%. In other words, less than half of K-12 operating expenditures in the state were for teacher salaries and benefits.

“It is interesting to contemplate the lost opportunities this study highlights. If California had the extra $1.8 billion that went to things other than teaching, we might have been able to hire more than 22,000 teachers statewide,” said Loren Kaye, president of the California Foundation for Education and Commerce (CFCE), a sponsor of the study. “This would have increased the number of teachers statewide by more than seven percent.”

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