America’s public school systems received just south of $1 trillion in 2023, according to a new report. The nearly 13-figure spending came amid COVID-19 pandemic-fueled declines in enrollment, attendance and student proficiency.
Despite a total of $946.5 billion in funding in 2023, the average teacher didn’t receive a pay raise that kept up with inflation.
According to the Reason Foundation’s K-12 Education Spending Spotlight, America’s schools spent an average of $25,941 per student in 2023. In non-inflated dollars, K-12 funding from 2020 to 2023 increased by 8.6%, or $1,610 per student.
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Most of the funding boost came from federal COVID-19 pandemic aid, primarily from Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grants totaling $189.5 billion. A total of $1,181 per student came from those federal aid dollars.
Since public school policies and budgets are state and local matters, spending levels vary widely by location. The highest per-student spending in 2023 was in New York, where schools spent $36,976 per student. Federal COVID-19 aid didn’t move the needle as much in the Granite State, with per-student spending only increasing 3% since 2020.
On the opposite side of Reason’s scale is Idaho, where per-student spending reached $11,937, little more than a $500-per-pupil increase since 2020.
Student struggles
Amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, governors across the country shut down schools in March 2020 in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. Student learning loss became evident in the years that followed, as classrooms reopened doors that had been closed for months, in some cases for much longer.
While Reason notes that certain student scores had begun to trend downward before the pandemic, schools were given billions of dollars with the intention that the added resources would bring student achievement back to form.
Department of Education scores show the share of high school seniors who tested below basic math achievement levels jumped from 40% to 45% from 2019 to 2024, the largest change in more than two decades.
Fourth graders in the lowest 10% erased 20 years of gradual progress during the pandemic, dropping to achievement levels not seen since the early 2000s.
NAEP fourth-grade math proficiency
Reading scores told a similar story. NAEP scores show that the reading levels of low-performing students dropped significantly during the pandemic, only to rise slightly in the years after. Only the highest-performing students maintained their test levels.
NAEP fourth-grade reading proficiency
Another symptom of the pandemic’s school closures was chronic absenteeism. The Department of Education found nearly 1-in-3 students missed at least 10% of school days in the 2021-22 school year. That figure ticked back down to 28%, but it was much worse in some areas. In Washington, D.C., just under half of all public school students were considered chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year.
Teacher pay
The Reason Foundation report points out that the billions of dollars in federal funding didn’t go to increasing teacher salaries. While high inflation accompanied the latter years of the pandemic, teacher pay continued to see piecemeal increases that couldn’t make up for the higher cost of living.
“Between 2002 and 2020, the average teacher salary remained virtually flat, decreasing by 0.6% to $74,698—but then from 2020 to 2022, it dropped by $4,151, or 5.6%,” the report said.
Where’d it all go?
If teachers didn’t receive a proportionate amount of the funding increase, where was it spent?
The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee tracked federal aid spending that included ESSR funds. Much of school spending went to enhancements that facilitated remote or segregated learning at a time when infection rates were still high. Other expenditures included outdated infrastructure or new textbooks, which Chalkbeat reports the Biden administration encouraged.
A January report from the Department of Education said schools nationwide devoted $11 billion to combat learning loss through programs such as summer remedial classes. The report said schools spent more than $1 billion on tutoring.
Chalkbeat reported in January that nearly half of the Washington funds spent in the 2022-2023 school year went to new staff.