Probably not.
But, if this video is accurate (and the CATO Institute usually is) then it costs just as much to educate a student at the Anacostia school for future dropouts as it does to send a kid to Sidwell-Friends. If that’s the case, maybe those “voucher people” aren’t so crazy after all.
H/T: Doski
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The Legal Satyricon 
This video seems a slight bit disingenuous. There is not a public school crisis in America, there is a public school crisis in rural and inner city schools. There are plenty of school districts that are the best in the world, most of Massachusetts and New Jersey and north shore and the western suburbs of Chicago, Long Island to name but a few areas. Hell, there is more than a handful of schools in the city of Chicago home to one of the worst overall school districts in America that are world class. In these areas it would not matter what the schools real cost was the parents and tax payers there would pay the cost. The next problem with comparing a crappy DC school with Sidwell is that Sidwell only accepts a limited number of students and even if they where to double there size that does not guarantee that they will be able to find the same high level of instructors and support staff to keep at the same level. Then of course there is the real problem to all of this, the parents and community that makes up most of the crappy schools. Parents that don’t give a damn now are not going to give a damn at a top tier private school. The kids that want to learn despite there parents lack of involvement are not all of sudden going to be going home to a area where academics are valued. The best solutions are the most politically impossible solutions such as tracking or just admitting that college is not the end all be all and giving non college tracked kids some technical skills.
I don’t think that the video is making the value judgment you’re assigning to it… all the video is saying is that schools should be truthful about what the education costs.
Many private schools benefit from a number of services provided by the public (often including busing and often including certain special education services as two examples) and these benefits are not reflected in their per-pupil spending numbers either. Yet in fact this spending is a burden on local public school district spending. Also, because private schools are not bound by the same mandate to (mis)educate every person’s child and a panoply of other federal and state government requirements, private schools can falsely seem more efficient than public schools; certain cohorts are far more expensive to educate than others.
There is a problem in the attention the video gives the number. Just because a district spends, say 15k on each student on average doesn’t mean each pupil cost 15k to (mis)educate. Not at all. For example, special education services are hugely expensive compared to other services. If we eliminated that mandate, like private schools can and do, well in one district I have worked in that would have amounted to a 40% decrease in per pupil spending. I have seen other districts report much larger numbers.
Statistical sorcery like this is a problem not merely in school districts either–it goes to the highest levels of our government and corporations. I agree that disingenuous reporting is problematic–but it’s terribly common everywhere, public and private. There are also districts that are completely forthcoming about their numbers, and they get no credit. What districts get bonus points for such disclosure? People vote on budgets–they are incentivized to appear as small as possible as a result.
Vouchers are a terrible, terrible idea. They will, by design, abandon the vast majority of students and displace a disproportionate amount of spending by presuming each child costs the same to (mis)educate. They also assume a market based solution to education will work when in reality the vast majority of students would have no practical choice. Districts and schools will not accommodate enormous fluctuations and swings in student populations without huge waste. A 100% voucher based system would be moronic, and just serve to leave the most needy in an even worse situation.
Maybe it makes me naive, but I am willing to believe public schools are not deliberately misleading tax-payers. They are simply trying to present the information they think the tax payers most care about.
Take capital costs, for example… I work with public transit authorities. I know that most of their large capital expenditures are heavily subsidized by the Feds (generally 80%). Assuming it’s the same (or at least similar) for schools, I can see why you would omit this from a report to local tax payers.
Are the tax payers still shelling out that money at the end of the day? Sure. But it’s not coming out of the town’s budget, so it’s not really appropriate for the town to be reporting on it in the context of “this is how schools are impacting your property taxes” or whatever…
Hey, if we allowed public schools to cherry pick who they admit, the cost per pupil would go way down.
[…] I can’t believe that Randazza fell for this. Yes, private schools can get away with lower spending per pupil rates but there are many reasons […]
I’m forever amazed at the conservative desire to eliminate public education. It seems to me that maintaining stability and order – two cornerstones of conservative political philosophy – are dependent upon a population that feels empowered and mobile. The alternative is populism, a decidedly non-conservative state of being.
Having graduated from a private high school with only 82 others, I have to agree with the previous comments: classroom, teacher and parent quality don’t scale up. If we really want to break the bell curve and provide a solid education for everyone (and I’m not sure that’s possible), the state will have to intervene in a number of politically undesirable ways. Vouchers aren’t about improving education, they are about trashing the public system.
[…] ways people believed this would happen is through education. Unfortunately, primary education is costly and minimally effective in affecting outcomes. This phenomenon is summarized in an imperfect but representative graph from the Cato […]