Teacher Glut?

Via Education Intelligence Agency

NEA released its latest edition of Rankings and Estimates (available in Acrobat format at http://www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf). Different readers will have different areas to examine in the 129-page report, but here are two noteworthy statistics and estimates EIA has computed from NEA’s numbers:



* School enrollment rose again this year, but only by an estimated 0.8 percent, beginning the predicted flattening-out of student population growth (elementary school enrollment growth was only 0.6 percent). Nevertheless, current expenditures for K-12 public education rose by an estimated 4.4 percent. America’s K-12 public schools taught an additional 393,511 students this year, but K-12 current spending grew an additional $16,675,175,000 – or $42,375.37 for each new student.

* In 2003-04, American public elementary schools taught 1,649,027 more pupils than they did in 1993-94. But there were 247,620 more elementary school classroom teachers in 2003-04 than there were in 1993-94. Simply put, for every 20 additional students enrolled in America’s K-8 schools in the last 10 years, we hired three additional elementary school classroom teachers.

Once again, it is all about productivity... What do you get for the always increasing number of teachers and money per child? What would you get if those resources were not monopolized by one state provider?