On June 10, House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) looked Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence in the eye at a congressional hearing and called him weak, pathetic, and a man she was grateful never taught her children — after his district suspended boys for complaining about a locker room filming incident rather than addressing the student who did the filming.
K-12 public school spending crossed $1 trillion in fiscal 2024 — a first in American history. Fourth-grade reading proficiency is not significantly different from 1992, the first year the National Assessment of Educational Progress tested reading. Outcomes in all four NAEP subjects were worse in 2024 than in 2003. New York spends more than $30,000 per student and achieves 31% proficiency. D.C. spends $31,887 per pupil and scores below national averages. Spending and results move in opposite directions.
The reason is administrative capture. Since 1950, non-teaching and administrative positions grew 702% against a 96% rise in students. A 2025 peer-reviewed study found that union density drives administrative expansion, not instructional hiring. Inflation-adjusted teacher pay fell 6.1% from 2002 to 2022 while the bureaucracy grew. Loudoun’s superintendent’s base salary was $375,000 in 2023, and it has grown since. That’s not a funding shortage — it’s a misallocation, protected by the $28 million in 2024 political donations from the National Education Association and the American Federation for Teachers.
My mother taught Head Start in the 1970s. She’d be the first to tell you that money alone can’t fix what poverty breaks at home. She’d also distinguish between under-resourced and structurally captured. American public education is the second. DEI coordinators replaced reading specialists. Gender ideology generated more administrative guidance than literacy deficits. Fentanyl overdoses went unreported for weeks while the superintendent was at out-of-state conferences. These aren’t symptoms of poverty. They’re choices.
The counterargument is legitimate and worth answering directly. High-poverty districts face real obstacles no budget can fully offset — children arrive without adequate nutrition, stable housing, or consistent parental support, and those gaps don’t disappear at the schoolhouse door. But Arkansas enacted the LEARNS Act in 2023 — choice accounts, starting teacher pay raised from $36,000 to $50,000, merit pay, and 120 literacy coaches in failing schools — and posted a 5.3-point overall proficiency gain in a single year. Fourth-grade math went from 38% to 47.1%. The assessment switch from ACT Aspire to the state-built ATLAS limits direct comparison, and most Arkansas students still aren’t meeting targets — so no one is overstating results. But the direction moves when you change the incentive structure. Idaho reduced real per-pupil spending from 2003 to 2022 — the only state to do so — and improved math scores. Socioeconomic challenges explain the baseline. They don’t excuse a 702% administrative expansion while kids regress on reading.
Congress delivered nearly $190 billion in COVID emergency school funding. Much went to pay increases. Enrollment has dropped since 2019 — with a projected further 5.3% decline through 2032 — yet hiring continues. The Loudoun County spectacle wasn’t an aberration. Thomas Sowell has documented for 50 years how credentialed incompetence survives behind institutional complexity. The June 10 hearing was the demonstration.
Reform requires three things that the unions will resist. School choice introduces competitive pressure that a monopoly otherwise ignores by design. Administrative caps redirect billions from non-instructional overhead toward classrooms. Merit pay ties compensation to what a teacher produces — the same logic every other skilled profession accepts. Arkansas proved all three work in combination. When failure has structural consequences, institutions find a way to improve.
WHY TEACHERS UNIONS FEAR, AND FIB ABOUT, NEW FEDERAL PROGRAM
My youngest son graduated from West Point. My youngest brother is a retired Green Beret weapons sergeant. Those institutions don’t survive producing the outcomes American public schools routinely post because in those places, failure has real consequences that no administrator can conference-travel his way out of. The Marine Corps didn’t issue me a certificate for good intentions after leaving Officer Candidate School.
Accountability is not cruelty. Low expectations are.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a Bachelor of Science from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.