Teachers, administrators, and other support staff are among the most important drivers of student achievement. However, in this brief we describe how Pennsylvania’s students do not enjoy equal, or equitable, access to teachers and other staff and examine how staffing disparities are closely connected to disparities in school funding.
Combining a school funding adequacy analysis by Penn State professor Dr. Matthew Kelly and RFA’s own analysis of school staffing levels, we find that, despite serving more students with high-cost educational needs, Pennsylvania’s inadequately funded districts have fewer staff per student and pay them significantly less than adequately funded districts. Collectively, inadequately funded districts would need to hire more than 11,000 additional teachers, 1,000 additional administrators, and 1,600 additional professional support staff and spend an additional $2.6 billion in salaries alone just to provide what students receive in Pennsylvania’s adequately funded districts. We conclude that, without reversing these staffing disparities which are rooted in funding disparities, Pennsylvania policymakers are unlikely to reverse disparities in student achievement.
Check out the brief and share it with state and local policymakers. To learn more about this project, please contact the authors David Lapp and Anna Shaw-Amoah.
RFA is grateful to The Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation for their ongoing support of the PACER project. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.
