kitchen table math, the sequel: boondoggle

Saturday, January 9, 2010

boondoggle

average cost of 1 DC voucher: $6,600
cost of sending 1 DC student to DC public schools: $28,170

DC Vouchers Solved?
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3 comments:

lgm said...

I'd like to see the list of apples compared.

Is transport included in one and not the other? How about special education and medical support?

January 10, 2010 at 8:51 AM
Anonymous said...

I agree that it's not an apples to apples comparison. The $6600 voucher will not be enough to pay for most private schools. I'm sure it would fall short by thousands of dollars.

At the same time the $28000 per child amount is a lot more per kid than we spend in my state! Makes me wonder what those DC classrooms look like in terms of resources, aides, and other supports, not to mention salaries (not just of teachers, but of everyone employed in a large public district, which is lots). The overhead is certainly much greater, and probably much less essential than in one small private school, and that makes a huge difference.

Public education squanders enormous amounts of money on a many-tentacled bureaucracy that has gotten much worse in the last 10 years.

January 10, 2010 at 10:25 AM
Anonymous said...

I lived in the DC area for many years and DC schools have been deservedly known as a hotbed of waste, fraud, corruption, indifference and incompetence for decades. Their student population reflects the gamut of the usual urban problems. The schools are run as a jobs program instead of an academic endeavor, the bureaucracy eats up resources and even a former superintendent said that they were not attracting even middle-tier teachers. Check out the data on the University of DC ed school; the results are pretty appalling and most of their grads end up as DC teachers. The DC students typically score at the bottom on any testing, but I understand that the last results showed them passing Detroit. Hardly an accomplishment. Years ago, I remember a comparison between DCPS and the Baltimore Archdiocese schools, which had almost exactly the same number of students; DC had about 100 times the number of central-office staff as Baltimore. It's no wonder that anyone who cares and can get their kids out of the system, does so.

To be fair, I understand that there are a couple of elementary schools, in the affluent Northwest, that are decent, but no middle or high schools.

January 10, 2010 at 2:31 PM

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