While claiming to spend $8,322 per student, the District of Columbia’s public schools actually spend $24,600 per student, writes Andrew Coulson of Cato in the Washington Post. That includes operating and capital spending from all sources.
For comparison, total per pupil spending at D.C. area private schools — among the most upscale in the nation — averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater.So why force most D.C. children into often dilapidated and underperforming public schools when we could easily offer them a choice of private schools?
Coulson writes more here on how he derived the numbers.
Overall, D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation — and the most expensive.
Yikes! Nearly half a million dollars per year to educate a class of 20 little snowflakes. You could easily rent commercial space, blow $1,000 per kid on supplies, pay two teachers $100,000 per year to run the class and show a profit on the operation.
I can’t wait to hand the government our health care system.
Yes, Lori, your snark is perfectly apt, because the worst-case scenario is the only one possible, Washington, DC, is exactly like every other school system in the United States, and education and health care are exactly alike.
Sheesh.
Why not find out why for that much money children are having to go to dilapidated schools?
I think we already know why.
The first, and - really - only, priority of big-city school systems is to generate paychecks for adults. After that, everything else can go hang - and usually does.
Yes, the problem’s inadequate funding. Always has been, always will be.
Actually Allen that’s not what I said.
Eagleson has it.
If we didn’t transfer money from those with it to those who haven’t eaned it, how in the world could we sustain the 66% of the population that spends more than it earns? In this sense, the money multiplier worked exactly the way it should have… The fool and his money soon parted, with wondrous short term economic consequences. Oh look- an implosion!
This is just Gammon’s Law at Work.
He included the cost of charter schools but apparently left out those students! With them included, the costs are much closer to private school per-pupil costs!
And private schools aren’t required to accept special education students, who are sometimes more expensive to educate.
Lame.
> Actually Allen that’s not what I said.
That’s not what you said *yet*.
M.E. wrote:
> And private schools aren’t required to accept special education students, who are sometimes more expensive to educate.
And since there’s pretty substantial amounts of funding to defray those expenses the percentage of special ed kids has risen significantly.
My only surprise in the situation is that there hasn’t been an effort to find the fundable “specialness” in all kids since that specialness now has a monetary value.
He included the cost of charter schools but apparently left out those students! With them included, the costs are much closer to private school per-pupil costs!
Actually, he didn’t.
“To arrive at the real total per pupil funding figure for the district, all of these funding sources must be added up, excluding funding aimed at charter schools or higher education, and the resulting total must be divided by the number of students enrolled.”
And, if you look at the spreadsheet where the data comes from,, you’ll see that funding for charters is given as a separate line item (row 107) and is not included in the public school funding line item (row 101).
Anyone ask the DC school system where the $8,322 figure came from?
You’ve got to watch those numbers. First, consider the source. Is having a gun in your home more or less dangerous than not having one? You could ask Handgun Control Inc.. But unless you are prepared to use their figures as just a lead for further research, track each number to its source, and understand how they came to the conclusion, its best to look for other sources. Flash: The Cato Institute finds government institution more expensive and less effective than private counterpart. Imagine that.
Suppose you gathered figures showing the medical spending per capita on both hospital patients and the general population. I’ll make a wild guess and say the cost per person is higher for hospital patients. On further study, we find that hospital patients are less healthy on the average than people in general. “Obviously” the hospital is counter-productive, producing less heathy people for more money.
Washington DC is sort of a big slum side by side with the very rich. The latter send their children to private schools. The public schools have the problems of slum schools. Big surprise: they have to spend more money, and get worse results than if they were teaching the typical private school child.
Richard - Couslon addresses that comparison in one of the parts of the post Joanne even quotes:
For comparison, total per pupil spending at D.C. area private schools — among the most upscale in the nation — averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater.
So Washington DC is spending $10,000 more on average than the private schools per child. And they are still getting worse results.
Furthermore, it’s not special education:
> The public schools have the problems of slum schools.
So do D.C. charters yet they get by on significantly less then district schools - in 2002-2003 about $3,500 per year less according to the Hoover Institute: media.hoover.org/documents/0817947620_45.pdf
The problem isn’t and never has been the amount of money. If that were the case you’d expect to see some correlation between funding and results. But there is no correlation between funding and results so someone who’s willing to forgo grinding their ideological axe would look elsewhere.
I don’t know where Coulson gets his figures, according to Greatschools.net the district is spending $14,992 per student, not the $8,322 he claims, or the 24K figure he claims.
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/dc/other/3#finance
In addition, and I may be mistaken on this, but aren’t D.C. schools under federal and mayoral control? Haven’t they been that way for some time?
Kudos to KDeRosa for debunking M.E.’s false statement. As KDeRosa explained, I excluded charter schools from both the enrollment and funding numbers. My figures are all for District-run schools alone.
And, Mike in Texas, if you want to know where I got my numbers, you might try clicking on the hotlink Joanne provided, where she says: “Coulson writes more [here] on how he derived the numbers.”
Also, FYI: GreatSchools’ numbers are so low because 1) they are three years old and 2) DC enrollment has fallen significantly over the intervening years while its total spending has not, causing per pupil spending to skyrocket. There’s no mystery here.
This is a good general point for anyone who wants to write a piece on public school spending for their local paper: the official published figures are almost always 2 to 3 years old, and so almost always seriously understate spending today. Get the latest figures from the district or state officials, do the basic arithmetic involved, and write it up.
Andrew,
You make reference to the $8200 figure, but no direct links to that data. Am I just overlooking it?
In addition, did you included private donations to the charter schools in their per student expenditures? I’m not familar with the charter situation in Washington, are some of them in buildings maintained by the school district and is the district paying the cost for the building and its upkeep?
Haven’t DC schools been under federal and mayoral control for some time now?
Mike,
Good question. So good in fact, that the Washington Post’s editor asked me the same thing before they ran the piece. I pointed him to two stories, one of them by one of the Post’s own education reporters. Theola Labbe, of the Post, wrote at the end of January that:
“The recommendation to spend $8,770 a child when the school year begins in August came from State Superintendent Deborah A. Gist. Now, $8,322 is spent for each student.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013004253.html
The other citation was from the Washington Examiner, though I don’t have the link handy.
Regarding charter schools, I did not count charter school spending or charter school students at all in this comparison. This is only regular district public schools versus area private schools.
Best,
Andrew