Looking into the Future

With No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reauthorization on the horizon, it never hurts to look into the future of American public education. Thankfully, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released its Projections of Education Statistics to 2017. This report provides some valuable information when considering reasonable future expenditures on education.

According to NCES, total public school enrollment is expected to increase 10 percent between 2005 and 2017. This growth is expected to occur primarily in the South and West, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Texas. The Pre-K through eighth grades can expect the greatest enrollment growth, 12 percent, while the high school grades are only expected to grow by 4 percent.

The report predicts that the number of public high school graduates will increase 8 percent between 2005 and 2017. While Nevada, Arizona and Utah will see particularly large increases in the number of high school graduates, Louisiana, Vermont, and North Dakota will see particularly large decreases. These numbers highlight the states that are expected to particularly excell or fail at graduating students from high school.

Of greatest note, however, is the predicted growth in spending on education – about 42 percent (with a low estimate of 32 percent and high estimate of 50 percent) over the 12 year period. At this rate, projected K-12 spending in 2017 would rise to $626 billion. Of course this growth was predicted before the present economic situation.

On average, federal dollars account for 9 percent of education funding or $39.7 billion of the $441 billion spent on education in 2005 according to the report*. In order to maintain this spending level in 2017, the federal government will have to spend $56.3 billion on K-12 public education, or almost $17 billion more than currently spent. This is a hefty increase, especially given that inflation adjusted federal K-12 education spending has actually decreased slightly in the six years since NCLB was authorized. Reversing this trend in the next ten years to reach more than 40% growth in spending will represent a drastic change for the federal education budget.

If federal education spending does increase by 2017 to mirror the current 9 percent spending level, Congress should do all that it can to make sure that their money is well spent.

* All dollar amounts are given in inflation adjusted 2006 dollars.