Funding, school staffing practices and duty-to-bargain

The number of non-instructional staff in schools has increased since 1950 at seven times the rate the number of students. Can this be explained by increases in funding? What explains the hiring by some districts of additional teachers, compared to other staff? And how does this relate to student achievement? We use state School Finance Reforms in a staggered synthetic difference in difference framework to study the effects of additional revenue. We find that when districts receive unanticipated grants from the state they spend it on hiring more teachers if duty-to-bargain (DTB) is not required. More teachers and other school staff enhance math performance in non-DTB states but not otherwise. We conclude that adverse effects of collective bargaining on long-term outcomes may be partly due to staff reductions induced by union demands to use marginal resources for compensation. Duty-to-bargain appears at odds with hiring practices that foster (math) achievement.