Monday, October 12, 2009

Per Pupil Spending


The EIA has their latest charts of school spending by district out from the '06-07 school year. Here's Tennessee: http://www.eiaonline.com/districts/Tennessee.pdf

Nashville stats include enrollment of 73,731 and per pupil spending of $8,561. That's an increase of 18.8% since the '01-'02 school year for only 8.9% more students.

5 comments:

Rob said...

If their per-pupil spending is up 18.8%, the change in enrollment is irrelevant. If their enrollment is up 8.8%, you'd expect their TOTAL spending to go up by approximately the same percentage and their per-pupil spending would be about the same.

100 students and $800,000 = $8,000 per student

108 students and $864,000 = $8,000 per student

The changes here are really compounding the total amount spent. Their enrollment is up 8.8% AND their per-pupil spending is up 18.8%. That means their total budget has gone up by 27.6%!
8.8% of that increase is due to increased enrollment. 18.8% is due to an increase in the amount being spent per pupil.

Buckley said...

Inflation from 2001-2009 was 21.9%.

Rob said...

@Nashteach - 21.9 might be right for 2001-2009, but the published stats compare two school years, five years apart: the 2001-02 school year with the 2006-07 school.

The inflation rate from 2001 to 2006 was 15.2% (CPI-U, as reported by the Bureau of labor statistics). During the same five year period, per pupil spending increased by 18.8%. Education spending grew faster than inflation.

din819go said...

Hmmm...interesting statistics. Healthcare and education spending both increasing at greater the rate of inflation and the quality is declining in both...no wonder we are staring at healthcare and education reform...now to get spending in both areas in line...

Eric H said...

According to the state's K-12 site, MNPS avg. daily membership is down to 72,014 for 2008. Expenditures per student in average daily membership were up to $9,340 (not average daily attendance or ADA - it's well over $10k per student if you "only" count the students actually at school).

Tax revenue collected per student (the actual "cost" to taxpayers) is even higher.