The top chart shows total public K-12 spending as a percent of GDP. The bottom chart is the same for per-pupil spending. For this one I used the share per billion dollars of GDP to avoid a big mess of decimal places.
11 thoughts on “Raw data: Public school spending in the US”
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So America is disinvesting in its children? Or is meant to document increased teacher productivity?
The rule of thumb for school funding is that about half of it goes to salaries and benefits. So perhaps it's no surprise that we have three teacher strikes at once in Massachusetts, or we did until yesterday, when one of them was settled. Teacher strikes have been much more common since 2018.
If the GDP is growing more than the population of children (I don't know if this is the case or not, but I understand our population is aging) is a per-GDP comparison really apt? Does how much it costs to provide a child with an education actually increase with GDP? I would have thought that inflation-adjusted per-student dollars would be the measure.
Well, it doesn't tell the whole story for the reason you cite, which I is perhaps why Kevin also included a spending per pupil metric.
A spending per pupil normalized to GDP still…
Perhaps the MAGA Christian Nationalist will increase their financial support of education when the rest of us wake up to fact that bible teaching is a necessity in our public schools (the proper Protestant bible only of course).
I'm wondering why the use of "pre billion of GDP" myself
Birthrate in 1990 was 16.7 per 1000 of the population
In 2022 the birthrate was 11.0 per 1000 of the population
That looks like about a 33% decline
So number of students declined - GDP in 1990 was about $10 trillion
GDP in 2022 was $22.5 Trillion ! So GDP doubled, the birthrate declined and spending per pupil declined as well
Color me confused
"Spending per pupil" is, by definition, independent of birth rate and number of students.
Joel
Duly noted however Drum added per $Billion of GDP
Also note that total expenditures as a % of GDP was almost flat - BUT - GDP doubled within that time frame so total expenditures also rose to maintain that flat rate
So, where did the $ go if spending per pupil declined?
It may be down as a % of GDP but inflation adjusted spending per pupil has been rising:
https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/5_7_2024.asp
"salaries and wages in conjunction with employee benefits accounted for 77.5 percent of current expenditures for public elementary and secondary education"
Maybe teachers are picking up the slack at Wal Mart. /s