A new report from Florida shows trends in that state that substantially mirror those in Oklahoma.

In both states, public-school funding has increased alongside funding for school-choice programs. But much of the growth in public-school funding in Florida is paying for administrative growth even as the number of Florida teachers has declined.

The report from the Foundation for Florida’s Future, “Where Did the Money Go? Changes in Expenditures Per Student, Staffing, and Average Teacher Salaries in Florida Public Schools 2020 to 2026,” examined spending and revenue trends in Florida schools during those years.

Authored by Ben Scafidi, a professor of economics and director of the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University, the report found that Florida’s public-school enrollment has declined as spending has increased.

But the added money is paying for many more administrative positions, not teachers. Furthermore, Florida teachers’ average pay has declined slightly after adjusting for inflation despite the overall funding increase.

“Voters need to ask school district leaders tough questions as to why increased staffing outside the classroom is the priority, and why raising teacher pay is not,” Scafidi wrote. “It is simple math—if districts use their increases in funding to hire more administrators and others outside the classroom, that funding cannot be used to give teachers pay increases.”

Scafidi noted that inflation-adjusted current expenditures in Florida public schools increased by almost $3.1 billion statewide from academic years 2020 to 2025, while district enrollment declined by 75,954 students.

Even after adjusting for inflation, expenditures per student increased by 11.9 percent statewide.

Scafidi calculated that Florida’s “current” expenditures—a figure showing total expenditures minus expenditures on capital and debt service—averaged $12,226 in 2020 (in current inflation-adjusted terms) and rose to $13,680 by 2025.

Total expenditures per student in Florida, which includes funding for capital and debt service, increased from $14,245 in 2020 to $16,646 in 2025 on a per student and inflation-adjusted basis.

The bottom line, Scafidi noted, is that Florida students “had significantly more resources devoted to their education as compared to students in 2020.”

From 2020 to 2025, Florida’s public-school student enrollment declined 2.7 percent. The number of teachers employed fell by 5.5 percent. But the number of administrators in Florida public districts and schools increased by 9.6 percent.

“Florida parents, educators, and other voters should ask their local school boards and superintendents why the hiring priority was on administration and other outside-the-classroom support functions,” Scafidi wrote.

Furthermore, the report noted Florida teacher pay declined after adjusting for inflation. While the average teacher salary in Florida increased from $49,269 to $57,900 between 2020 and 2026, that failed to keep pace with the dramatic inflation of the Biden years, which continues to have negative ripple effects today.

“In recent decades, this 17.5% increase over a six-year period would have yielded a real raise for teachers, over and above the increase in the cost of living,” Scafidi wrote. “However, the 2020 to 2026 time frame saw the cost of living increase by over 20%. Thus, when adjusting for inflation, average teacher salaries in Florida fell by 4.8% over this time period.”

In some Florida districts, the effective pay of teachers declined by 10 percent or more after accounting for inflation.

“To most readers, it will seem odd that Florida public schools received an 11.9% increase in per-pupil current expenditures, over what was needed to accommodate the increase in the cost of living, but districts were not able to maintain teachers’ standard of living,” Scafidi wrote.

The report noted that a subset of 15 Florida districts did increase teachers’ salaries after inflation from 2020 to 2025, showing that other schools could have increased teacher pay. (Florida has 67 total public-school districts.)

The Florida data strongly resembles trends in Oklahoma.

Since the 2017-2018 school year, when teachers staged a walkout to protest what they described as insufficient education funding, total new revenue to Oklahoma public schools has exploded.

In the 2017-2018 school year, schools reported having more than $6.3 billion in revenue from all sources excluding carryover. By the 2024-2025 school year, revenue reached more than $9.5 billion, an increase of more than $3 billion.

Oklahoma’s public-school enrollment has also declined, falling from a high of 703,650 in the 2019-2020 school year to 686,718 in the 2025-2026 school year, a loss of 16,932 students.

An NEA Research report, “Rankings of the States 2025 and Estimates of School Statistics 2026,” found that Oklahoma public schools had $15,111 in revenue receipts per student, based on average daily attendance, during the 2024-2025 school year. That was an increase of 55 percent since the 2017-2018 school year, when a prior edition of the NEA report found Oklahoma public schools had revenue receipts per student of $9,724.

Yet Oklahoma’s academic outcomes have not improved. In fact, they have largely declined.

As in Florida, much new funding in Oklahoma schools went to non-teaching positions.

Between the 2018-2019 school year and the 2024-2025 school year, staff numbers at Oklahoma public schools increased by 6,270 additional school employees. Just 602 were teachers, or less than 10 percent, according to WANDA, a database maintained by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

And a significant share of new funding was simply placed into bank accounts, according to a recent state report. Oklahoma school officials have increased the amount of money placed into carryover accounts from around $2.4 billion in the 2017-2018 school year to more than $4.5 billion by the 2024-2025 school year.

Notably, in both Florida and Oklahoma, school-choice programs are allowing students to obtain private-school education at a much lower cost than public-school education.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits ranging from $5,000 to a maximum of $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition.

At least 80 percent of Oklahoma private schools serving K-12 students charge tuition rates lower than the $15,111 in per-pupil revenue that public schools receive, based on a recent survey conducted by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. And the maximum $7,500 parental choice tax credit will cover all tuition costs at 71 private schools in Oklahoma.

In Florida, Scafidi noted that the average award to choice students was $8,594, compared to public schools’ per-pupil revenue of $16,646.

“The average award to choice students in Florida is a little over half as large as total per-pupil expenditures in Florida public schools,” Scafidi wrote.

And, Scafidi noted, “at least 27.9% of these choice students in 2026 had a documented disability, much higher than the percent of students with disabilities in public schools.”

Nathan Hoffman, senior legislative director for the Foundation for Florida’s Future, noted that the Scafidi report significantly undermines one attack often lobbed at school-choice programs by critics.

“In recent years, critics of educational choice have argued that Florida’s growing menu of education options is draining resources from traditional public schools,” Hoffman wrote. “But a new report by economist Dr. Ben Scafidi finds that inflation-adjusted funding for Florida public schools has increased significantly since 2019, even as district enrollment has declined.”