The Public School Crisis: Higher Payrolls Associated with Worse Student Performance

Debates about public school funding sometimes include an underlying assumption that more funding results in better student outcomes. Available data tells a more complex story. Our review of 12,531 school districts across the country shows a negative correlation between overhead and student performance. In other words, districts that spent more on teacher and administrative pay saw their students’ standardized test scores drop. Using the Open the Books proprietary database of government salaries across America, we calculated how much each U.S. state increased its total public school payrolls from 2019 to 2023. We compared that number to the change in each...