I can't remember where I heard it, but maybe a month ago, there was a statistic about bloat in education. Roughly since 2000, there has been a 5% increase in student population, which Is basically flat when you consider the gain in overall population. The increase in the number of teachers is 10%. And that kind of makes sense given many districts enacted smaller classroom sizes. (Does this mean 'better'? That is up for debate, but what I was considering was the explanation for the gains.) But when you look at the increase in administrative staff, the increase is 40%.

There is going to be a lot of howling, but what I would like to see is a chart of student performance year by year from the time the Department of Education was introduced of student performance - meaning the percentage of kids at grade level - and the percentage of non-teaching staff. Because I will bet there is a statistical correlation between the increase in bloat with the decrease in student performance - and this doesn't even take into account grade inflation. I want to see them try to defend a poor record. It should probably go back 10-20 years prior to that as well.