New research strongly suggests teachers’ unions are driving the skyrocketing administrative bloat that’s sucking resources away from classrooms. By diverting additional funding toward hiring more people, they starve effective educators of the raises and support they need, all to pad their own power structures. Unions benefit enormously from inflating the number of employees in the system, turning public schools into top-heavy bureaucracies that serve adults — not our kids.
Teachers’ union bosses gain in two major ways from the rapid expansion in administrative hiring — which also siphons resources away from teachers, students, and classrooms.
First, a larger workforce means a bigger voting bloc in local and state politics. Public school employees can be mobilized to push for ideological agendas, from changing curricula to boxing out alternatives by blocking school choice.
Second, more employees mean more revenue. Membership dues from 40 percent more administrators aren’t chump change — they add up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, giving union leaders immense financial clout.
Has that money brought down student-teacher ratios or rewarded excellent teachers with raises? The latest LM2 report from the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the country, paints a damning picture. Out of more than $400 million in annual revenues, less than 10 percent goes toward representing teachers — the very people the union claims to champion. Instead, those funds are funneled into left-wing causes and Democratic campaign coffers.
According to the latest data from OpenSecrets, more than 98 percent of the NEA’s campaign contributions went to Democrats in the last election cycle. At this point, the teachers’ union has become nothing more than a money laundering operation for the Democratic Party, using educators’ hard-earned dues to bankroll partisan agendas.
The self-serving system explains why teacher salaries have remained flat since 1970, even after adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile, spending per student has ballooned by about 170 percent in real terms over the same period. If the money were truly going to improve education, we’d see it reflected in better pay for teachers or enhanced classroom resources. But it’s not.
The unions actively push to funnel that funding toward hiring more people — administrators, support staff, and other non-teaching roles. Why? Because if the money went toward increasing salaries for good teachers instead, school systems would have less to spend on expanding headcount. That means fewer dues-paying members and lower total revenues for union bosses to control and redirect toward their political allies.
According to the latest data from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, student enrollment in US public schools has dropped by about 750,000 since 2014. In the same period, public school employment has increased by more than 600,000 people. Fewer kids, more adults. The government school system has morphed into a jobs program for grown-ups, with education for children as an afterthought. The situation isn’t sustainable, and it’s certainly not in the best interest of families or taxpayers.
My new peer-reviewed study, coauthored with Christos Makridis and published in Politics and Policy, confirms the unions’ role in this mess. We found that K-12 administrative bloat is more pronounced in places with stronger teachers’ union influence, all else equal. When unions hold sway, districts prioritize empire-building over efficiency, leading to layers of unnecessary bureaucracy that drain budgets without benefiting students.
Look at union-controlled Los Angeles public schools as a prime example. The Edunomics Lab data show that staffing there has increased by about 19 percent since 2014, even as the district has lost about 26 percent of its student population over the same period.
In what other industry do you go on a hiring spree just as you’re losing more than a quarter of your customers? Such decision-making would bankrupt a private business overnight. But public schools aren’t subject to market forces — they’re near-monopolies, insulated from competition by law. Without school choice, these unwise spending decisions hurt everyone: taxpayers foot the bill for the bloat, parents see their kids stuck in underperforming systems, and children suffer from misallocated resources. There’s no recourse because families can’t easily take their education dollars elsewhere.
The pattern holds in other union strongholds. In California, where unions dominate, staffing has increased by 11 percent while student enrollment has dropped about eight percent. Compare that trend to a state like North Carolina, which has banned collective bargaining for public employees. There, staffing has only risen by about four percent since 2015, with student enrollment remaining essentially unchanged. The difference is stark: without union pressure to inflate headcounts, districts focus on stability rather than expansion at all costs.
Teachers themselves are the forgotten victims in this scheme. Many of them feel left out by the one-size-fits-all system that prioritizes politics and union bosses over educators and kids. Teachers who are tired of seeing their dues siphoned off can join alternative representation like the Teacher Freedom Alliance — for free. By exiting, they would send a powerful message, incentivizing unions to refocus on fighting for higher salaries rather than just adding more boots on the ground to bolster their power.
Ultimately, the solution lies in introducing real competition through school choice. When families can vote with their feet — and take their education funding with them — districts will be forced to spend money wisely. Teachers will be financially free to find models they can believe in and that serve students well. Resources will flow into classrooms and toward training and retaining effective teachers, not toward unnecessary administrators and bloated staffs. It’s time to break the unions’ stranglehold and put kids first.
