With 11% fewer students why don't we have fewer teachers?

A recent study commissioned by the Vermont Business Roundtable and the Lake Champlain Region Chamber of Commerce indicates that between 1996 and 2006, Vermont public school enrollment has declined by 11% while total public education staffing has increased by 22%. To many, this seems to be a clear and obvious indicator of unreasonable spending increases. While there may indeed be spending increases worthy of challenge, a closer examination of the data reveals that these statistics can't be used as-is to draw conclusions about what is actually happening.

First, it's important to know that while staffing has increased by 22% over the entire 1996-2006 time period, the increase was only 5.4% from 2001-2006. So a disproportionally large share of the staffing growth took place from 1996-2000. It is noteworthy that this period corresponds roughly to the phase-in period of Act 60, a law enacted with the specific intent of helping towns with insufficient ability to raise the local tax revenue needed to fund their schools at a level comparable to others schools in the state. During this time period, therefore, it would be reasonable to anticipate a significant increase in statewide expenditures and staffing as these schools "caught up" with their peers. A closer study would need to be made to determine if there is indeed evidence of this being the driver of the unusually large staffing increase during this time period.

Focusing on 2000-2006, we see that total staffing increased by 5.4% while enrollment declined by 8.1%. A closer look at staffing, however, shows that regular classroom teaching staff increased by only 1.3% during that time period. The remaining growth comes from a variety of other types of positions. A closer study of what's driving the growth in these particular areas would likely be illuminating.

Focusing then on only the 8.1% enrollment increase and the 1.3% increase in regular classroom teaching staff, the core question remains - i.e. why don't we need fewer teachers if we have 8.1% fewer students? To understand the answer, it's important to have a clear picture of what an 8.1% enrolllment decline actually looks like at the level of an individual school or individual grade.

For this exercise, will use a hypothetical example of a town with a total K-12 enrollment of 234 students, distributed evenly among the grades at 18 students per grade (the national average). Assuming a consistent 1%-per-year enrollment decline over 10 years, total K-12 enrollment in the school would decline by 9.6%, which works out to approximately 22 students. But when that decrease is viewed at the grade level, we see that the original 18 students per grade drops to approximately 16.4 students per grade. Even assuming a willingness to go as high as 25 students per grade, there are still too many students to be able to consolidate classes and eliminate a teaching position. Merging two grades with 16.4 students each would results in a single class of almost 33 children, which most would agree is untenable. In fact, it would take a full 35 years of a 1% annual enrollment decline to get to a level of enrollment per class (12.5) that would enable consolidation and elimination of teaching positions.