Over the past twenty years Missouri has ranked 45 out of 100 states (adding the District of Columbia) in spending increases. Often these increases amount only to the decrease in total students, not a real increase in available funds. Fewer students automatically increases per pupil allocations.
Why does this matter? Because the United States is moving toward a teacher shortage in the next decade, and all states will be competing for the limited candidate pool of new teachers. I have explored the potential shortage of teachers in a separate blog “Who Wants to be a Teacher?” https://wtucker.edublogs.org/
The support for new teachers in salaries, benefits, mentoring and overall school funding will be crucial to attracting a new generation, a generation that will replace our aging teacher population. The per-pupil increase requested by education leaders lobbying Jefferson City is slightly over 1% of total funding. It will mostly adjust for the decrease in enrollment around the state.
The Reason Foundation ranked states for their over the past eighteen (2002 – 2018) years and Missouri came in 45th. The figures of the Foundation include the federal spending for each state so the overall rates are based on sources beyond the state allocations in spending. State governments provide an average of 46.7% of total spending on schools. The local schools generally provide half of school funding, so State funding is the only equalizer in public school funding.
So how much do the states in the Education desert of school funding show increases over the past eighteen years? Illinois is head and shoulders above all its rival states to the south and west with per pupil funding increases of 55% . New teachers will definitely be shopping there for jobs.
The other border states of Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky and Arkansas have double digit increases in per pupil spending over the last eighteen years. Missouri has an increase of 6%. So new teachers will see good trends in salary and benefits in all of Missouri’s competing border states, even though these states rank in the lower half of per pupil spending in the entire United States. The U.S. average increase over the same period is 26%. Missouri slumbers at number 45 of the states with it 6% increase. https://reason.org/commentary/
The amount of per pupil spending is among the most telling factors in the health and success of schools. This is most likely due to the greater number of teachers per school, as well as the considerable allocation to teachers’ salaries and benefits. The best teachers will naturally gravitate to the schools with higher per pupil expenses. This may not be a concern when there is a oversupply of teachers, but that is not what we can expect in the next decade [https://wtucker.edublogs.org/
The Reason Foundation also studied the per cent of total public funding allocated to all schools, compared with members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, primarily in the nations of Western Europe
The United States allocates about 11.6% of public funding to education, below the international standard of 15%, and spends about 4.96% of its GDP on education, compared to the 5.59% average of other developed nations. ” So we have nothing to brag about. [https://reason.org/
The quality of teachers is considered by most experts to be the most important factor in school improvement. Missouri needs to make this state more attractive to the best teachers. That includes local graduates of Education programs, who could look for greener pastures, when they graduate. Just crossing the border into Illinois could turn into better salaries.
Missouri did make strides by raising its salary for starting teachers to $38,000, making it competitive among its neighboring states in the “desert.” This should give the state a fighting chance to recruit better teachers in the next generation.
School leaders are not asking for much in a 1% increase in state support. Any bill that supports increase funding for local schools should be approved.