While the Los Angeles Unified School District spends $3.9 billion a year, only about one-third of this budget actually supports teacher salaries, textbooks and supplies. The other two thirds of the budget goes to pay for such things as inflated salaries to the incredibly large number of administrators in the system. In 1990-91, for example, the superintendent of the school district earned more than $160,000. Almost one third of the district’s entire budget supports administrative costs in the headquarters and regional offices. A small army of non-teaching bureaucrats (called “administrators”) earned 1990-91 salaries in excess of $100,000 a year. While only 44% of the Los Angeles’ districts’ total number of employees are teachers, 86% of California’s private school employees are teachers.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, only about 25% of the school budget actually goes to pay for such educational expenses as teacher salaries, textbooks, and furniture. The remaining 75% goes to pay for “administration” costs. The Milwaukee public school with the highest per-pupil funding is also the high school with the lowest student grade point averages in the city. The deplorable facts about Los Angeles and Milwaukee are representative of conditions across the nation. In America’s larger urban school districts, the percentage of government school budgets allocated to actual teaching expenses is typically around 33%. (full article)

The total annual public school budget in the U.S. exceeds $300 billion in goods and services. This is more than our nation’s military budget. Six million people work for public schools, a figure that represents about 30% of all civilian government employees. (full article)

An important corollary of the government school monopoly is the huge amount of money government schools spend to achieve the non-education of American children. During the 20 years between 1972 and 1992, public school spending in the U.S. increased by 400% while actual enrollment declined by 7%. However the number of public school teachers jumped dramatically from 1.4 million in 1960 to 2.4 million in 1991. Between 1960 and 1991, teachers’ salaries adjusted for inflation increased 45% from $24,229 to $35,243. During the same three decades, expenditures per pupil, adjusted for inflation, increased by more than 100%, from $2147 to $5872. (full article)