This back-to-school season, the average American parent expects to spend $885 per child on everything from pencils to clothes to sports equipment. These late summer months are straining families’ budgets, and parents aren’t the only ones feeling the financial pinch.
Nearly every public school teacher in America spends her own money to outfit her classroom in preparation for a new academic year. According to 2021 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 94.8% of public K-12 teachers dip into their own pockets to buy school supplies. Each one who does so spends an average of $579 in today’s dollars.
Some districts provide teachers with a modest stipend for classroom supplies, but the average American classroom is outfitted by the generosity of parents and teachers. While districts bemoan budget shortfalls, teachers beg for the basics and hope enough dry-erase markers and Lysol wipes come through their doors on the first day of school.
A quick math lesson reveals that the school supply scramble is not a matter of insufficient funding. On average, America’s school districts spend $16,280 to educate one student for one year, not counting the cost to build or maintain the school building. The average classroom, according to the most recent data, has around 20 students. This means that $325,600 flows toward that classroom each year. If none of that is making it to glue sticks and construction paper, where is it all going?
Some of the money goes toward teacher pay. The average teacher earns $66,397 per year, not including benefits like health insurance and retirement contributions. While a teacher is the most important instructional investment, teachers also need textbooks, curricula, and more, which all fall under the banner of instructional costs. Public schools spend $9,885 per student per year on these expenditures, or $197,700 for our class of 20 students.
The teachers are hired, the school is open, and our average classroom still has $127,900 left over. We’re going to need a cafeteria, which NCES accounts for in its data. An average of $517 per student per year is spent on “other,” a category mainly comprised of food service. For our average classroom, this amounts to about $10,000 annually.
So far, our classroom is cost-effective. But that all disappears when we add in “support services,” which comes out to $117,560 for our classroom of 20 students. Some non-teaching employees, such as school nurses, librarians, and bus drivers, are essential. Others, like administrators with nebulous job titles and even more nebulous responsibilities, are not. And that is exactly where costs have exploded in recent years.
Between 2000 and 2019, the number of district administrators grew by 87.6% while the student population grew by only 7.6%. This trend is not new. Between 1950 and 2009, the population of K-12 students nearly doubled, but administrator jobs grew by more than 700%.
Administrators have proliferated even in districts where student enrollment has declined. Los Angeles Unified School District increased its spending on administrative positions by $315 million over 10 years, even as enrollment dropped by more than a third. Some administrative positions might not be necessary at all: Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, pays a dozen “equity” administrators more than $100,000 per year. Milwaukee Public Schools employs four administrators, who work on things such as “gender identity and inclusion” and “restorative practices.”
Also included in “support services” are teacher professional development sessions, which cost an estimated $18 billion a year. A great many teachers dread these mandatory trainings. One ex-teacher blogger summarized a health lesson, saying, “I learned not to pick up vomit with my bare hands.” A report by TNTP found that “most teachers do not appear to improve substantially from year to year.” School districts could better support their teachers by supplying them with practical needs, not wasting their time and taxpayers’ money on professional development that does not develop them as professionals.
While schools spend major money on “support services,” teachers struggle to afford the basics that help them manage their classrooms. Every plea for extra Kleenex is an indictment of a system that prioritizes adult wants over student needs.
A teacher does not become more effective by adding yet another administrator or pushing her into yet another training. But a teacher could run a classroom more smoothly if the material needs of that classroom were covered. School districts should put students first, and show some much-needed appreciation to their teachers, by prioritizing the basic items that make classrooms run.
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Angela Morabito is the director of media outreach and spokesperson at the Defense of Freedom Institute. She is a senior fellow at Independent Women and a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary.
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