Public Spending Per Student Drops
By Stephanie Banchero
U.S. public-education spending per student fell in 2011 for the first time in more than three decades, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data issued Tuesday.
Spending for elementary and high schools across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. averaged $10,560 per pupil in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. That was down 0.4% from 2010, the first drop since the bureau began collecting the data on an annual basis in 1977, the agency said Tuesday. However, when you adjust the figures for inflation, this isn’t the first drop on record. By that measure, spending per pupil dropped once in 1995 and hit its highest level in 2009. In inflation-adjusted terms, spending per pupil was down 4% in 2011 from the peak.
Overall, the nation’s pre-kindergarten-through-12th grade schools spent $595.1 billion on about 48 million students in 2011, with $522.1 billion going toward daily operating expenses, the data show. That was a decline of 1.1% from 2010, the second year in a row that total spending dropped.
For decades, per pupil spending had been on the march. The fiscal 2011 level was more than double the $5,001 in 1992. But schools have been under a fiscal crunch in recent years, driven in part by increasing costs for items like teacher pension and health care. Salaries gobbled up $308 billion, the largest share of the total, with another $109 billion going toward employee benefits including pensions. Many districts have laid off teachers, reduced programs, closed schools or increased student fees to balance budgets.
Education officials say decreased spending will make it more difficult to prepare U.S