By Adam Pagnucco.
In Part One, we reviewed County Executive Marc Elrich’s critique of MCPS’s measurement of class size. In Part Two, we listed the kinds of class size estimates that MCPS has published over the years. In Part Three, we witnessed unexplained anomalies in MCPS’s previously reported class size estimates that calls them into question. Today, let’s examine a few other data series that may tell us what’s going on.
First, let’s look at student/instructional staff ratio. Here is how MCPS defines it: “The Student/Instructional Staff Ratio is calculated by dividing the weighted enrollment as of September 30th, of the reporting school year by the number of instructional staff. Weighted enrollment includes enrollment in Grades K-12 plus ½ the pre-K enrollment. Instructional staff is determined as all school-based instructional Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) positions (includes staff under the Teachers, Other Professional, and Instructional Support categories).”
This measure is not the same as class size but it should track it. When the number of students per instructional employee rises, one would expect class size to rise. The inverse also applies. Here is MCPS’s systemwide student/instructional staff ratio since FY03 as reported by its Schools at a Glance series.
From FY03 through FY10, the number of students per instructional staff averaged 10.8. Then the Great Recession hit MCPS, pushing up the ratio to 11.5 in FY12. It stayed at 11 or higher in every succeeding year but one through FY20. This pattern makes sense as the Great Recession saw local per pupil spending cuts followed by a local per pupil spending freeze for several years thereafter. Those fiscal conditions plus rising enrollment should be expected to push up the number of students per instructional staffer.
However, the ratio began to fall during the pandemic as enrollment fell. By FY24, it reached 10.0 students per instructional staffer, the lowest measure in the entire series.
Let’s zero in on staffing and enrollment as shown in the two-axis chart below. MCPS’s full-time equivalent (FTE) positions are shown in the green line and the left axis. MCPS’s enrollment is shown in the orange line and right axis. Both measures appear in MCPS’s operating budgets.
Staffing as expressed by FTEs has risen steadily for most of the period since the Great Recession. Enrollment began to rise in FY08, peaked in FY20 (when the pandemic started) and has been mostly falling since.
The chart below shows FTEs per hundred students, effectively combining the two measures.
The impact of post-pandemic rising FTEs and falling enrollment is clear: as of FY27, MCPS will have the highest number of FTEs per hundred students (16.4) in at least twenty years. Consider that in the FY06-19 period – the years before the pandemic – this stat averaged 14.3. This is a meaningful change.
So what should we make of all the data in this series?
First, I don’t trust MCPS’s historically reported class size estimates. They contain huge, unexplained spikes and drops of 30%, 40% or more without corresponding changes in definitions. As we saw in Part One of this series, County Executive Marc Elrich essentially accused prior MCPS administrations of playing games with class size data, declaring about the school system, “In fact, at no time did I remember when this place was transparent.” Whether the cause of this was the one he identified or not, I think he has a point. He also credits current MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor with trying to clean this up and I hope he is right.
Second, consider this. Since FY20 – the start of the pandemic – MCPS has lost 6% of its enrollment but has grown its workforce by 11%. That has caused a surge in employees per student to levels unseen in twenty years. However, the percentage of MCPS’s workforce that is comprised by teachers has dropped from 51.9% in FY20 to 48.5% in Taylor’s FY27 recommended budget. MCPS has added a whole lot more people, but because they have disproportionately been other kinds of staff besides teachers, it has not made as much progress on class size as it could have.
This story of decades does not inspire me with confidence despite my personal praise of Taylor.
MCPS’s past class size estimates cannot be trusted. The county executive and the county council must insist that MCPS begin reporting simplified, consistent and easy-to-understand class sizes starting with one estimate for the whole system. That can be accompanied by one estimate for each school type and one estimate for each grade. Reports full of insane amounts of gobbledy-gook as seen in Part Two are unacceptable. And then MCPS should replicate those calculations for years going back before the pandemic as well as future years using the same methodology. Any variations must be explained in a fashion understandable to laypeople.
Because guess what? Those laypeople are you – the taxpayers. And you deserve to know exactly what you’re paying for.