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.
MORE NEWS: MSU Trustee Scolded for Going to Charlie Kirk Vigil
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.
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.
