Do you know how much you spend per student in your local public school? Polls show that most Americans can’t answer this question. And public education interest groups like teachers’ unions benefit from this knowledge gap because then they can demand more spending and few, if any, taxpayers and voters know what the numbers are or how the money is being used.

This election year, lobbyists in the states such as California, Missouri and New Mexico are asking taxpayers directly to increase spending for K-12 schools through ballot initiatives, claiming schools are underfunded.

However, spending patterns tell a different story. In each of these three states – and nationally – the public expenditure on education it is growing and has been growing for many years. From the 1969-1970 school year, inflation-adjusted expenditures per child in California and Missouri has nearly tripled, while New Mexico’s school spending has more than doubled.

How educators use the resources is crucial. The Show Me Institute of Missouri, a research and policy organization, recently published a guide to education spending in the state and explains that school budgets allocate Less TO instruction and more in non-instructional uses today than a decade ago. In particular, while the number of students in Missouri’s public schools has been declining, there has been a sharp increase in the number of teachers and administrative staff in general. In fact, the number of staff increased by 44%.

The increase in administrative staff is part of a national trend. Our colleague Lindsey Burke testified before a US House subcommittee in 2022 and reported that the number of directors and deputy directors of grew up 37% since 2000. The number of administrative staff in the school district has increased by 88%.

Kennesaw State University professor Ben Scafidi studies administrative bloat in K-12 schools and finds that non-instructional staff growth over the past 30 years is greater than double the size of the number of students is increasing. Teachers only do makeup 48% of the K-12 workforce today.

It’s not news that students struggle in the classroom, but the price of this poor performance is staggering. In California, the fiscal year 2023-2024 K-12 budget was whole the state budgets of Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Tennessee—mix ($128 billion). Approximately 3 out of 4 students have results below the class level in basic subjects.

However, special interest groups have introduced a ballot proposal to authorize $10 billion in general obligation bonds for K-12 colleges and community colleges. The bonds are estimated to cost state taxpayers enormously $500 million a year for 35 years. Reason Foundation find that California school districts are already $220 billion in debt and liabilities, the equivalent of $40,000 per current enrolled student.

These spending figures do not take into account the substantial influx of federal funding that school districts across the country have received during the COVID-19 pandemic, amounting to 190 billion dollars in additional expenses. That was in addition to the annual federal funding that public school districts also receive. Before the pandemic, federal taxpayers provided K-12 schools about 70 billion dollars every year.

As part of the COVID-19 relief packages, only California received more than 23 billion dollarsMissouri about 3 billion dollarsand surrounding New Mexico 1.5 billion dollars in new federal funds. As of early August 2024, according to the most recent data from the US Department of Education, each of these states had about 10 percent of their funds left to allocate.

Future research by this op-ed’s co-author, Madison Marino Doan, and Kennesaw State’s Scafidi will reveal that school districts are more financially secure than ever before. Several factors contribute to this, including higher 2020 property tax revenue, which accounts for nearly half of most school districts’ budgets; healthy cash reserves built up before the pandemic to handle economic downturns; the large influx of COVID-19 relief funds, which allowed districts to build reserves and invest in infrastructure projects that reduce future costs; and record state “rainy day” funds set aside in 2022.

Few Americans know how much taxpayers are spending per student in their hometowns, nor do they realize the extent of the increase in school district bureaucracy or the massive federal funding districts have received during the pandemic. This surplus of funds has it is not translated for sure in more instruction or improved student performance. So before voters decide whether to increase public school spending, they should know where their money is going and whether it’s really benefiting students in the ways that matter most.