A very interesting chart from our friends at Open the Books shows rising state public school systems payrolls have correlated with falling test scores in recent years:

There were six states that increased their school payrolls by at least 23% from 2019 to 2023. Four of them saw student performance decrease, and one saw no change. Only Utah moved up in the NAEP rankings.

A negative correlation does not prove causation, but it raises another important question: Is the negative correlation more likely the result of increased teacher pay or is higher pay for administrators a factor? …research suggests that an increase in administrator pay is a more likely cause of the negative correlation with student achievement.