The Education Intelligence Agency recently issued a report that presents education statistics from a different angle, ranking states and school districts by measures such as teacher compensation as a percentage of instructional spending, number of classroom teachers per district-level administrator, and teacher salary as a percent of the average worker’s salary.
Many of the tables in that report, Tribute for a Light: Public Education Finances and Staffing, raise provocative questions about the way certain states or districts are allocating resources to public education.
For example, one table gives a breakdown of public school employees by occupation and expresses each category as a percentage of the total workforce. Nationally, 52.2 percent of school employees are teachers, but 12 states actually have fewer teachers than non-teachers in their public education workforce. Only 44.5 percent of Michigan’s public school employees are teachers, yet it still has fewer aides and school staffers than the national average.
For more information . . .
The May 2001 report by Mike Antonucci, Tribute for a Light: Public Education Finances and Staffing, is available by sending a request with your mailing address to the Education Intelligence Agency via fax at 916/392-1482 or via e-mail at [email protected]. The report also is available at the Agency’s Web site at http://members.aol.com/educintel/eia/Tributex.html.
