By Dawn Larzelere. In response to our recent report, Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio Communities for the Next Economy, The Fordham Institute's Education Gadfly team examined Ohio districts’ Student to Administrator ratios as well as the amount spent on administrators as a percent of total expenditures. Fordham also took their analysis a step further by drilling down to see if patterns emerged based on district size.

Greater Ohio’s report found that Ohio spends 49 percent more on district administration than the national average.  The state ranks 47^th in the nation in the share of elementary and secondary education spending that goes to instruction, and 9^th in terms of money spent on administration.

In Fordham’s research, among other things, they found a sizable range in terms of the amount spent on administrators and most of that correlated with districts’ size with smaller districts often spending more on administration costs.  Quoting from a recent blog entry on the Fordham analysis:

“In light of this, districts – especially the smallest ones — must ask themselves tough questions about whether it’s worth merging positions where there’s potential duplication in order to discover cost savings.”

Check out the Fordham Foundation’s blog post for more information.