In and out of school: US Education spending

[Hannah Bell]

In 2007, the U.S. spent 7.6% of GDP on education, 1.9 points above the OECD average, and exceeded only by Iceland. (See the box at the end of this article for data details.) But before this is turned into a right-wing, “See, you just can’t throw money at this problem,” homily, several factors lurking below this fat headline number must be discussed.



First, 41% of that spending is on tertiary education (college and beyond), 15 points above the average. Spending on primary and secondary education, is 4.0% of GDP, matched or exceeded by six countries, and just 0.5 point above the average. So we stint on mass education in favor of elite...

Breaking down expenditures by category is no more flattering to the U.S. than the enrollment numbers. Almost 12% of U.S. spending on primary and secondary schools is devoted to capital expenditures, 4 points above the average and one of the highest shares in the world (or the subset for which the OECD reports data).

Current — as opposed to capital — spending in the U.S. shows an unusually large share devoted to administrative and support staff, and a small share devoted to teachers’ salaries. But what do our education reformers want to do? Spend more on computers and other gadgetry, and break teachers’ unions and cut their salaries...Putting all that together, as the graph above shows, the share of GDP devoted to teachers’ salaries is rather low in the U.S. Big spending on teachers doesn’t necessarily guarantee good results. But this is a strange place to be directing the budgetary axe.





http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/InAndOutOfSchool.html

[dkf]

1. Does support staff include special Ed professionals?

Randy Weingarten said most of our excess spending comes from special needs kids. Maybe that needs to be reevaluated.