Where Teacher Salary Money Goes
Benjamin Scafidi examines where teacher salary money goes on Fox News.com. The answer centers around school choice and a lack of student achievement.
West Virginia, which has become a national flashpoint, makes for a good case study, and one available in my recent report for EdChoice, “Back to the Staffing Surge.” Like virtually all states, West Virginia has significantly increased its public school expenditures in recent decades. Using publicly available data, since 1992, and adjusting for inflation, West Virginia public schools have increased spending by 39 percent per student to $12,512 per student by 2014, while average teacher salaries fell by 3 percent during that time period.
So while school districts had cash to spend, teachers were seeing money actually leave their wallets. So where did that additional money go?