We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

We are spending more and more money on public education, and getting worse and worse results. There has been no accountability for the systemic failure of our public schools, except for the fact that millions are fleeing them in favor of home schooling and other options.

Minnesota is typical in this regard. We keep spending more and more money: inflation-adjusted per pupil spending is up 31% since 2002. And yet the quality of our public schools is abysmal: more than half of Minnesota’s K-12 students can neither read nor do math at grade level.

So you may wonder, where is all that money going? My colleague Catrin Wigfall supplies a large part of the answer:

District administrative staff in Minnesota public schools is up over 132 percent (132.1 percent) since 2000. Principal and assistant principal growth over the same time period is up 50 percent. Compare those increases to student growth and teacher growth at 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

So the student population is essentially flat–it has actually declined since 2019–but more and more administrators are being paid the big bucks to “administer” fewer and fewer students:

These data are from Minnesota, but we are seeing the same thing across the country. More spending, worse results, with administrators and superintendents making out like bandits. The public schools are not run for the benefit of students.