What’s behind the rise in public school non-teaching staff?
Nationwide, inflation-adjusted public school funding has grown steadily, rising from $14,969 per student in 2002 to $20,322 per student in 2023, according to Reason Foundation. Much of this increase was spent on hiring new employees, with public school staff increasing by 15.1 percent during this time, even as student enrollment rose by just 4 percent.
The bulk of these new hires were non-teaching staff, a broad category that saw a 22.8 percent increase compared to a 7.6 percent increase in the number of teachers. This trend long predates the Covid-19 pandemic, when federal funding rose to historic levels and gave public schools the financial flexibility to hire and retain staff despite falling enrollment.
There are many factors that may have contributed to the rise in the number of non-teaching staff in public schools. For example, the federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, included testing, data collection, and reporting requirements that created demand for central office administrators to comply with the law. As they attempt to modernize, public schools have adopted new technologies, requiring additional network administrators, software engineers, and other positions.
Fortunately, federal data can help identify the key drivers of staffing growth over these two decades. Between 2002 and 2023, increases in two categories—instructional aides and student support staff—stood above the rest, as shown in Figure 1.
Student support staff, which increased by 230,793 employees nationwide, often work directly with students. These positions include psychologists, social workers, attendance officers, and speech pathologists.
Instructional aides, sometimes called teacher assistants or paraprofessionals, increased by 230,440 employees nationally. These educators work under the guidance of teachers, typically assisting with classroom management, supporting students, preparing learning materials, and performing other administrative tasks.
Together, these two categories accounted for 51.7 percent of the total growth in public school staff in the last two decades. In comparison, the three National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) categories that comprise central office staff—administrative support staff, instructional coordinators, and officials and administrators—accounted for 17.6 percent of all growth.
Clearly, there’s more to the rise in public school staffing than administrative bloat. But why are public schools adding more student support staff and instructional aides to their payrolls? Special education, which is often blamed for rising public school costs, is certainly the first place to look.