School District Spending Across the US per pupil

[corktownyuppie]

Articles like the NPR one cited bother me, because they make it seem like teachers and programming are where the money goes. That's not even close to true. But the truth [[pensions) doesn't make an interesting story.

That's the problem with these studies. When you say "spending per student", you're doing a little bit of misleading arithmetic. "Dollars Spending per student" is just a matter of taking total spending, dividing it by the number of students, and voila!

No accounting for a teacher pension who retired in 1992 and lives in Arizona.
No accounting for a 90 year old building with years of deferred maintenance costs.
By the way, that 90 year old building costs the same to maintain whether it's 1,000 students or 500 students...that certainly affects how much is going "to the student".

And that's just the right-wing, conservative, economic argument. That's the unassailable stuff that is just plain dollars and cents. Don't even get me started about children in desperate need of social services, fear of getting raped on the way to and from school, a hard-to-fight gang culture that pulls people away from school if it doesn't kill them first.

I don't have any sacred cows here other than the children. And if you come out and say that Child A is getting $200 and Child B is getting $140, you're going to lead people to believe that Child A is getting more *benefit* than Child B.

But that's not usually the case, and that's my issue with these types of statistics.

[Hermod]

That's the problem with these studies. When you say "spending per student", you're doing a little bit of misleading arithmetic. "Dollars Spending per student" is just a matter of taking total spending, dividing it by the number of students, and voila!

No accounting for a teacher pension who retired in 1992 and lives in Arizona.
No accounting for a 90 year old building with years of deferred maintenance costs.
By the way, that 90 year old building costs the same to maintain whether it's 1,000 students or 500 students...that certainly affects how much is going "to the student".

And that's just the right-wing, conservative, economic argument. That's the unassailable stuff that is just plain dollars and cents. Don't even get me started about children in desperate need of social services, fear of getting raped on the way to and from school, a hard-to-fight gang culture that pulls people away from school if it doesn't kill them first.

I don't have any sacred cows here other than the children. And if you come out and say that Child A is getting $200 and Child B is getting $140, you're going to lead people to believe that Child A is getting more *benefit* than Child B.

But that's not usually the case, and that's my issue with these types of statistics.[/COLOR]

I would think that the higher spending/poorer outcome analysis would indicate that too much money is being leached away by the bureaucracy. Since the primary drivers are personnel costs [[to include pensions), the increased spending per pupil "should" be reflected in smaller class sizes.

[Wesley Mouch]

I would think that the higher spending/poorer outcome analysis would indicate that too much money is being leached away by the bureaucracy. Since the primary drivers are personnel costs [[to include pensions), the increased spending per pupil "should" be reflected in smaller class sizes.

So nobody knows where the money's going. But we need more, please.

Are teacher pensions appropriate? How about teacher's wages? Administrative costs per student? Adjustment for special needs? Non-pension debt? [[Pension debt is a labor cost that should be properly accrued for. Is it?)

How can we make decisions when even the most basic questions about school costs are unknowns. Just more money, please.

[Shai_Hulud]

Since the primary drivers are personnel costs [[to include pensions), the increased spending per pupil "should" be reflected in smaller class sizes.

Not if those personnel are administrators.

[Hermod]

Not if those personnel are administrators.

Which is my point. Very possibly Detroit schools may be "over administered" compared to Rochester or Utica. You have to start with the assumption that the only requirements are "teacher plus classroom plus supplies" and build from there treating everything else as "waste of money" and needs austere staffing. The problem is in a large bureaucracy like a big city school system the main drivers in a reorganization are:

1. Protect my job
2. Protect my staff
3. Increase my staff so I can get a promotion.
4. Eliminate as much hard work as possible

[Shai_Hulud]

Which is my point. Very possibly Detroit schools may be "over administered" compared to Rochester or Utica. You have to start with the assumption that the only requirements are "teacher plus classroom plus supplies" and build from there treating everything else as "waste of money" and needs austere staffing. The problem is in a large bureaucracy like a big city school system the main drivers in a reorganization are:

DPS definitely has too many administrators. Not only that, but an article a few months ago listed some DPS personnel who had much higher salaries than people in districts many times larger.

While that sounds absurd and supports the narrative about greed and waste the EM, whose job it is to make the numbers work and has the power to change them, says it's not material.

You could fire everybody in central administration and it wouldn't put a dent in the deficit," said Jack Martin, who did an 18-month stint as emergency manager that ended in January.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...fall/70469838/

Reading that quote again, I notice he says "central administration" so one could quibble with that, but if anyone should know it's the EM.

The real issue is the debt. It starts with a "b" as in billions and no amount of austerity is going to generate that kind of money in a district that has been losing income and cutting costs for more than a decade.

[corktownyuppie]

I would think that the higher spending/poorer outcome analysis would indicate that too much money is being leached away by the bureaucracy. Since the primary drivers are personnel costs [[to include pensions), the increased spending per pupil "should" be reflected in smaller class sizes.

Are personnel costs the primary driver? I'm not disputing it, I'm asking from a position of ignorance. I do know that building maintenance costs are a big issue as well.

The accounting of pensions is complicated and problematic. If pensions are funded at the point of them being awarded, then we'd be in good shape. In other words, if the teacher retiring in 1992 knew that his/her pension was fully 100% funded in 1992, then we'd be fine.

The problem is that many pensions are funded using an assumption that future funding levels will remain constant, which is a big, big, big problem. If a school district as 10,000 kids today and only 3,000 kids tomorrow -- and if the pension funding formula was relying on there being 10,000 kids as a constant -- then each future child will bear the 3x the burden as originally expected.

So, yes, you could call that a personnel cost. But it was a personnel cost that was incurred 25 years ago but paid today with today's dollars.

In which case, a more accurate headline would read "xxxx School District Receives Highest Amount Per Today's Student to Pay for Yesterday's Teachers."

[BankruptcyGuy]

Are personnel costs the primary driver? I'm not disputing it, I'm asking from a position of ignorance. I do know that building maintenance costs are a big issue as well.

The accounting of pensions is complicated and problematic. If pensions are funded at the point of them being awarded, then we'd be in good shape. In other words, if the teacher retiring in 1992 knew that his/her pension was fully 100% funded in 1992, then we'd be fine.

The problem is that many pensions are funded using an assumption that future funding levels will remain constant, which is a big, big, big problem. If a school district as 10,000 kids today and only 3,000 kids tomorrow -- and if the pension funding formula was relying on there being 10,000 kids as a constant -- then each future child will bear the 3x the burden as originally expected.

So, yes, you could call that a personnel cost. But it was a personnel cost that was incurred 25 years ago but paid today with today's dollars.

In which case, a more accurate headline would read "xxxx School District Receives Highest Amount Per Today's Student to Pay for Yesterday's Teachers."

1. Yes, personnel costs [[salaries, benefits and pension payments) make up the vast majority of school expenses. In my district, it's probably 85%. In other districts, it's even higher.

2. You raise a good point on the funding of pensions. The problem is [[and the reason they are attractive for politicians) is that the costs to fund the pension at one time are astronomical, making the permitted promise to pay in 30 years attractive. The correct result, probably, is that pensions should be cut off [[i.e. if you earned it, you've got it, but if you haven't, you're out of luck), as has occurred in the private sector. First rule when in a hole: stop digging. The public pension system is in a huge hole.

Each school district is now required to report its share of underfunded pensions. My district, with approximately 7,000 students, has a share in excess of $110,000,000.

3. You have it exactly correct on the issue of number of pupils and spreading of pension costs. The system, however, greatly benefits DPS. In the 1960's, I think I read that DPS had around 300,000 students. That would probably mean they had a staff of around 19,000. Today, they have a staff of around 3,200. If DPS was left to run its own pension, one teacher would be supporting six retirees. That won't work.

The other problem is that pension funds are allowed to declare their own expected rates of return. Their estimates are in the 8% or so range. That hasn't come to fruition, and the result is that the fund simply turns back to the taxpayer [[or effectively, today's students).

What a mess.