Classroom cash

It takes a lot of dough for Massachusetts to be nothing special in terms of staffing its public schools, according to the country’s largest teachers’ union. The National Education Association ranks the Bay State fourth in spending per public school student in the 2003-04 academic year but only 24 th in keeping down its student-to-educator ratio. More striking is that Massachusetts had the biggest increase in that ration – from 13.9 students per educator in 2002-03 to 15.0 students per educator the following academic year. The ratio increased by more than a whole student in only one other state (California); nationally, it stayed level at 15.7 students per educator.

One possible reason for the gap between spending and staffing is teacher’s salaries, by which measure Massachusetts ranked seventh in the nation last year. The average public school teacher’s salary was $53,076 here, well above the national average of $46,726 – and an increase of 2.5 percent over the previous year, above the national figure of 2.0 percent. More evidence for this theory comes from California, which had the highest average salary ($58,287) and one of the biggest increases (3.6 percent), along with the third-highest student-to-educator ratio. Then there’s Vermont, which has the lowest student-teacher ratio in the nation and an average teacher’s salary ($42,007) that is slightly below the national norm.

What about New York and New Jersey, where teacher’s salaries are slightly higher than in the Bay State but student-to-educator ratios are well below the national average? Their strong showings may have something to do with the fact that the NEA counts all educators, not only classroom teachers, in calculating its ratio. Last year’s annual “Quality Counts” report published by Education Week instead ranked states according to “average class size for self-contained classes in elementary schools,” based on 2000 data from the US Department of Education. By that measure, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York were all close to the national average of 21.2 students. (Nebraska had the smallest classes, and Arizona the largest.)

At least Massachusetts doesn’t have to cope with more and more students. According to the NEA, public-school enrollment dropped by 0.3 percent in the Bay State last year while rising by 0.7 percent nationally.

PUBLIC SCHOOL SPENDING 2003-04

*Spending for public schools, not including capital outlays and debt interest.

**The number of students enrolled in the fall divided by classroom teachers and other instructional staff. Average class sizes are presumably higher. Ranking includes ties.

Source: National Education Association (www.nea.org)