Another quick picture book story time – About those unsustainable “huge” staffing increases while public schools bleed enrollments. First – those enrollments (overall)
[LEA summed and School Summed enrollments from NCES Common Core]
Now by Locale (aggregating urban centric locale codes):
[seems like around 2013, some areas that had been rural were consumed by sprawl and reclassified]
What about all of those huge staffing increases while enrollments plummet (even if they aren’t)? Here’s the aggregate for staff per 100 pupils – mostly teachers – not growing!!!!! Some reclassification shifts & drift in those tiny categories at bottom:
Bruce D. Baker is Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami and co-director and creator of the School Finance Indicators Database. Widely regarded as the nation's leading scholar on the financing of public elementary and secondary education, he has served as an expert witness in school funding litigation in more than a dozen states and has advised legislatures nationwide on funding formula design. His influence extends beyond the United States: he is collaborating with the World Bank on a global indicator system for evaluating educational adequacy. A 2024 Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, he is the author of three books from Harvard Education Press, most recently Segregation & School Funding (2026, with Matthew Di Carlo), and nearly 90 peer-reviewed journal and law review articles.
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