Interest in the administration costs associated with Kentucky’s public education system increased recently, so I decided to explore some available data. Several days ago, I wrote about “Are Kentucky’s education administration costs out of line?” That blog looked at education funding breakdowns from the US Census Bureau’s annually issued Public Education Finances series and found that general education administration costs in Kentucky are above national average and are especially questionable given our overall education spending.

Today, I examine data found in another long-running report series from the federal government, this time exploring the ratio of teachers to other staff in each state’s school system. The data comes from multiple years of issues of the Digest of Education Statistics. The exact table where the data is found varies from year to year, with the latest data coming from the Digest of Education Statistics 2016, Table 213.40, “Staff, teachers, and teachers as a percentage of staff in public elementary and secondary school systems, by state or jurisdiction: Selected years, fall 2000 through fall 2014.”Older data can be accessed from various editions of the digest, available online from this web page.

Here is how Kentucky’s teacher to other staff ratio matches up to the rest of the states through 2014, the latest year of data available.

As you can see, Kentucky has consistently ranked among the very worst for its very low ratio of teachers to other staff members in the school system. The contributions made by other staff are the subject of much concern, with a significant number consisting of aides who at least one major report says don’t add much educationally.

A report prepared for the Kentucky Department of Education in 2003 titled, “A State-Of-The-Art Approach to School Finance Adequacy in Kentucky,” discusses the educational contribution of aides on Page 21, saying “research generally shows they do not add value.” The report suggests not using aides in its recommendations for a comprehensive school reform model.

But, Kentucky is in fact using a lot of aides, and a lot of other non-teaching staff, too. And, it is clear our use of these non-teachers is out of proportion with what most other states do.

So, are we running schools as a jobs project for adults or an educational system for our kids? The graph above seems to indicate the answer might be too much of the former. Maybe that needs to change.