How Much Do Public Schools Spend?

A trillion dollars. Trillion with a “T.”

Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics released a new report on public school spending in the school year 2023-24. It is the most updated federal data we have.

The topline finding is that K-12 spending in America passed the trillion-dollar threshold. $1.014 trillion to be exact, with $917 billion coming from state and local coffers and $121.2 billion coming from the federal government. After inflation, this is a 2.3% increase from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2024.

Total revenue, which represents the total tax take dedicated to K-12 education, averaged $21,065 per pupil. Current spending, which represents what districts spend minus things like construction and debt service, averaged $17,644 per pupil.

There was a large range of per pupil current spending by state.

DC leads the pack at a whopping $31,887 per pupil, with New York and Vermont both coming in at more than $30,000 per student per year. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all spend more than $25,000 per student. Hawaii, Rhode Island, Illinois, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maine, Alaska, Maryland, Wyoming, California, and New Hampshire all spend more than $20,000 per student.

At the bottom of the list, both Utah and Idaho spend less than $12,000 per student and South Dakota, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arizona, and Oklahoma all spend less than $13,000 per pupil.

Given the large sum of money that Americans are asked to pay via taxes each year, you would think people would know how much schools are spending. You would be wrong.

One of our most enduring survey findings is that Americans (and this includes American teachers and parents) have little idea how much schools spend.

Here is a figure from our survey that was in the field in February.

Americans consistently estimate school spending to be a third of what it actually is. Not surprisingly, they think that spending should increase. When given the facts, support for increased spending drops precipitously.

I have argued for years that the massive underestimation of school spending is a serious hindrance to education reform. When talking about raising standards or asking more of teachers or frankly any kind of changes in schools, it helps if people know how much is being spent. I totally get people thinking “Good Lord, schools get $5,000 per kid per year, leave them alone!” If schools actually only got $5,000 per student, it would make sense to lower our expectations of what they are able to do.

They don’t though. In current expenses alone, schools are getting more than $17,000 per student on average (and almost twice that in some states). In a class of 20 students, that is $340,000. I understand that there are some students that are more expensive to educate and must be in much smaller classes, but they do not explain the black hole of spending that amount falls into. We should be asking much harder questions about how money is being spent and whether or not it is going to its best and highest use.

Educating the public to the reality of school spending is super important. We don’t do enough of it.

This was originally published to our Substack.