Title: School Spending Is Not to Blame for Education Challenges | Issues 2020
Headings: Issues 2020: Public School Spending Is at an All-Time High
Issues 2020: Public School Spending Is at an All-Time High
The Narrative
Reality
Key Findings
Perception vs. Reality
Per Pupil Nearly Highest in the World and in History
Well-Maintained Schools, Well-Funded Teachers
Equitably Funded Students
Proper Arguments About School Spending
Endnotes

Content: Teachers in those states had ample cause to be discontent with their salaries, but they are the nation’s outliers, not the norm. Although the Economic Policy Institute has claimed that teachers earn 21.4% less than similarly skilled and educated professionals, [ 19 ] Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs have shown that the same methodology would find aerospace engineers “overpaid” by 38% and telemarketers “underpaid” by 26%. [ 20 ] A simpler way to assess teacher pay, they argue, is to see whether individuals gain or lose money when switching careers into or out of teaching. They find that transferring from the private sector into teaching is associated with an 8% salary increase, while leaving teaching for the private sector is associated with a 3% salary decrease. [ 21]
Teachers do have a legitimate grievance that they have not seen the rising level of public spending reflected in their paychecks. Benjamin Scafidi, a professor of economics at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, has calculated that even as per-pupil spending increased by 27% during 1992–2014, teacher salaries decreased by 2%. [ 22 ] Scafidi faults an increase in nonteaching personnel for teacher wage stagnation. During the period he studied, student enrollment increased by 19%, the number of teachers increased by 28%, and the number of nonteaching staff increased by 45%. If growth in nonteaching staff had matched growth in student enrollment, the money saved could have provided every American teacher with an additional $11,128 in compensation. Equitably Funded Students
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has called for a threefold increase in federal Title I spending, [ 23 ] which totaled $15.9 billion in FY2019. [