LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan’s K-12 educational network continues to grow in numbers every year despite fewer students and poor academic results.

Most organizations’ biggest expense are its employees; local school districts throughout the state have the highest number of full-time employees since 2007. That’s as far back as online records go.

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Michigan’s K-12 education system has been criticized for its poor academic performance. In 2025, the U.S. News & World Report ranked the state No. 39 overall in the country in Pre-K through 12 education.

Michigan’s ability to hire more people yet not improve academic performance is part of a national trend in U.S. public education that has drawn criticism from scholars such as Matthew Ladner of the Heritage Foundation.

Ladner wrote in 2024 that the true purpose of American K-12 education is not its stated purpose to educate children, but to spend money and hire adults.

That’s what’s happening in this state.

Michigan’s K-12 schools employed 225,700 full-time employees in 2024-25, a 13% increase from the 200,140 full-time employees in 2020-21, the first full year of the pandemic.

That increase in employees has come at the same time the K-12 districts have fewer and fewer students to educate. From 2020-21 to 2024-25, K-12 enrollment has dropped from 1.43 million to 1.42 million, the lowest in state history. In the last 20 years, Michigan has lost 282,197 students.

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The employees’ groups include teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, aides and non-instructional staff.

The cost of educating students has increased since the pre-pandemic days. In 2018-19, total K-12 funding was $14.8 billion. From 2022-23 through 2024-25, the total funding topped $20.7 billion a year on average.