Thomas C. Moore of Berkeley, CA asks:

What percentage of an overall education budget goes to "administration?" What's the average and what do you think it should be? Is there a correlation between a lower value and better school/district/state performance? In your opinion, is too much money "being squandered on bureaucrats," or is this issue a distraction?

Jane Hannaway responds:

TA relatively small fraction of education budget -- typically less than 10 percent -- goes to "administration." The relative amounts devoted to administration is smaller than many types of organizations. The administrator personnel category could include central office administrators as well as school principals. Some analysts, however, especially those critical of public education, lump everyone who is not a classroom teacher into "administration." These other personnel might include psychologists working with disturbed children, directors of special programs, specialist teachers (e.g., special education teachers, math specialists, etc.), personnel involved in curriculum development and security personnel. This latter group -- non-administrator/non-classroom teacher -- is the category which has grown most significantly as a fraction of the education workforce in the last few decades. Analysts have real concerns about the value that these additional personnel bring to the academic program of a school district. It is difficult, however, to get a good estimate of their value since we really want to know what these personnel actually do, not just their job titles which are often too generally labeled in available data sets.

In general, there is a negative correlation between the fraction of the workforce in the school district in non-classroom jobs and academic performance. The finding, however, does not necessarily mean that these personnel have a negative effect on academic performance because school districts serving disadvantaged communities often have greater need, for example, of social workers and security personnel and these districts also tend to be the lower achieving districts. Without these personnel, the situation may be even worse.

A case could also be made that rather than too much investment in administration in education, the investment is too little. That is, rather than being over-managed, education is under-managed. Greater oversight and supervision of teachers and the teaching practice might lead to greater education productivity and, thus, be well worth the cost. In general, we have only limited information about the most appropriate structure and deployment of personnel in education are still open.

Chester Finn responds:

This is a difficult number to pin down. The information is often disguised and it ranges greatly from place to place. How do you define "administration"? Is that where you would put the school librarian? The social worker? The bus driver and cafeteria worker? I've seen figures ranging from 15 percent to 55 percent.

It's worth noting, though, that OECD data indicate that U.S. public education employs a higher fraction of non-teachers than does any other advanced industrial country. That suggests to me that we have more overhead in the system than we need.

It is also pretty clear that too little of our education dollar reaches the classroom. Federal programs especially, with their little pots of money and enormous regulatory and reporting burdens, force state and local systems to hire lots of people to fill out an avalanche of paperwork. A better federal approach would be to provide states or districts with "block grants" of money which could be used for wide purposes. We should then hold states and districts accountable for spending this money wisely by looking at their results--how much their students are learning--instead of by filling out silly reports.