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$10,000 per student in taxpayer dollars? Ouch.
July 09, 2004
Remember Robin Hood? He's the fellow with the nifty income redistribution scheme, stealing from the rich, and giving to the poor.The U.S. Federal government has the idea a bit confused. It steals from taxes everyone, and gives it to the bureaucrats, all in the name of the common good.
We've never been enamored with the idea of government schools because we're convinced that they give the worst bang for the buck, being insulated from real-world competition and all. Well Education Weak noted recently that an estimated $501.3 billion in taxpayer money is spent for education in the United States.
Crunching the numbers, we found that's an average of over $10,000 per K-12 student, and that it takes four taxpayers to raise this amount. (For an exploration of where we got these numbers, see "Doing the Math" at the end of this article.)
We have a nagging feeling Americans are being overcharged.
Back in January we reported some similar annectodal data from Chris O'Donnell, who found $11,470 per student in his local school district's operating budget. And Ken Krawchuk took a similar course, reporting, "I took the Abington school district budget of $67 million and divided it by the 6,600 students, yielding a cost of over $10,000 a child."
Now we know this is true for the country as a whole.
What's interesting about Mr. Krawchuk's exploration is that he phoned each and every private school in the same geographic area as his school district and found most tuitions to be far lower than the $10,000 his school district is spending.
A 2002 report by The Independent Institute made a similar comparison:
In the 2001-2002 school year, the median private school tuition paid by ISF [Independent Scholarship Fund] recipients was $3,852—about one-third less than the $6,045 per pupil expenditure at California’s government schools for the 1998-99 school year.The Independent Institute's ISF scholarships are for parents to help pay for K-12 private schools, thus you could call these scholarships "private vouchers." Voucher critics (who like to demand that vouchers must be "fully funded" to be of any use) should note that the ISF scholarships are only worth a maximum of 75% of the child's tuition.
(For an in-depth analysis of the "fully funded" argument--also known as "all or nothing"--see our article: "The point to vouchers: Helping parents pay for private school" from earlier this year.)
It is no mystery that money taken from the people in the form of taxes, then given directly to government schools (government monopoly schools in the poorest areas such as our cities), is money poorly spent.
Private schools, by and large, give a superior education at a lower cost. We can't help but think converting even a portion of this money to private school vouchers would improve the situation--and children's education--dramatically.
And Robin Hood can take a vacation.
Doing the Math Here's how we came up with the numbers used in this article.
Using the data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the US population is about 281 million, with about 72 million of these under 18 (pdf). To figure about how many school-age kids there are we divided the 72.3 by 18, then multiplied by 13 to encompass the grades K-12. This gives us an estimate about 52.2 million kids in Kindergarten through 12th grade.
Interestingly, while searching for other statistics we came across this 1999 Census report on education (pdf) with all sorts of breakdowns of the student population, including how many in each category of age. We added up the columns for Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle, and High School and reached a total 52.6 million, satisfyingly close to our original estimate.
Now what about private schools? "Public Schools: Make Them Private" by Milton Friedman, and "How Members of Congress Practice School Choice" by Krista Kafer and Jonathan Butcher from the Heritage Foundation both indicate about 10% of students are enrolled in private schools. Subtracting 10% of 52.6 million for private school and another million for homeschooled kids gives us a final estimate of about 46 million public school kids. To keep the numbers user-friendly we'll call this 50 million.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, taxpayer expenditures for education this school year is over $501.3 billion. Rounding to $500 billion this gives us a ballpark estimate of $10,000 per school-age child. (Note that this is an underestimate, since the actual number of public school students is closer to 46 million, giving us an average of about $10,870 per kid in public school.)
Subtracting persons under 18 from the U.S. population, we get about 209 million folks 18 and over, which we rounded to 200 million, since some folks don't pay taxes. These 200 million citizens pay $500 billion in taxes for education, or $2,500 per taxpayer on average, per year.
Dollar-wise, this means it takes about four taxpayers to pay the government for the education of one child.
It's worse than you think. The $500B doesn't include capital money for building/maintaining the schools.
Daryl Cobranchi July 9, 2004 07:18 PMIt's not worse everywhere. The Wichita Falls ISD spends less per student and that includes capital expenses. Check out the Trackback for more details.
Kraft July 10, 2004 02:47 PMKraft, you make an excellent point, but remember that the $10,000 figure is an average, so some places will spend more and others, less. The lesson? Even our government-run schools don't have to spend so much per child. I've read that Utah schools spend somewhere in the ball park of $5,000 per child. Meanwhile D.C. spends over $12,000.
chett July 11, 2004 07:42 AMChett, yes, it is an average amount. My point was to state that instead of making the $10,000/student figure a battlecry for private schools, let's use districts that do not spend $10K on students as an example on how to improve other districts.
The original author states "Private schools, by and large, give a superior education at a lower cost. We can't help but think converting even a portion of this money to private school vouchers would improve the situation--and children's education--dramatically." I simply do not agree; I would much rather reallocate public funds within the pubilc school system to improve them and make them more efficient.
Kraft July 11, 2004 11:52 AMMeanwhile, the districts in Utah that spend $5000 per student are agitating for more money, seeing as how all the other school districts are getting $10,000.
And let's not forget that in Utah, many parents supplement their child's education heavily with tutoring and additional exercises. This makes the cost of education artificially low, because the money the parents spend on this is not included in funding statistics.
Wacky Hermit July 15, 2004 02:52 PMHey, kraft, where ya from? I live in Wichita Falls, go to Hirschi.
Clayton August 2, 2004 03:41 AMI don't agree with you even 10,000 per student is not enough money. We can't all afford to send our children to private schools or suppliment their education with "tutoring and additional exercises." The whole reason they invented public school in the first place was so that people who could not afford to send their children to private school could educate their children. And every cent that is spent on vouchers takes a cent away from public schools, so in a way that is only making the problems worse.
How can you be upset over 10,000 dollars spent to educate a child, did you know we spend 22,650 per prison inmate every year? This includes room and board, education, and recreational activities, clothing and health care. That's about the amount of a state college student's tuition!
I'd be a little more concerned with improving the education of public schools where everyone gets a chance to be educated. If we improved public school education, more non-minority, minority and disabled children would stay in school and get an education instead of dropping out maintaning the crime rate and being thrown into prison adding to the 2 million prisoners in jail.
"One in six jail inmates dropped out of school because they were convicted of a crime, sent to a correctional facility, or otherwise involved in illegal activies." (Bureau of Justice Statistics) Considering that 44% of blacks, 53% of Hispanics, 59% with a speech disability, 66% with a learning disability, and 61% of non-citizens in prisons did not finnish high school and that over a third of these left because of academic problems and two-fifths left because of economic reasons (i.e. going to the military, getting a job). (Bureau of Justice Statistics) I would say that they would not be in prison today if they had been a well-funded public school. If more money had been spent on the public school to educate them, even if it was only 15,000, we would not be paying the for the education of 2 million prisoners now and therefore could have saved ourselves alot of money.
If more money was spent to pay teachers more so that they would tutor the students after school, children would have less academic problems and have a better chance of succeding. If a little more money was spent on loans for colleges or even put towards the colleges budgets, then these students would feel as if they had more of a chance and continue on in school instead of feeling so hopeless that they drop out and give up. If more money had been spent on extra curricular activities then there would be more to choose from allowing everyone to get involved in something or even allowing students to create groups that they would not have to pay to be in. This would also keep the children of the streets so they don't get involved in illegal activities.
More chances need to be given to the children in public schools. Our children are the future of america no matter who they are, where they came from and how much money they have, or where they go to school. They should all be treated equally and fairly and with great respect.
So, please consider the fact that funding vouchers for students to go to charter or private schools is only hurting the education of every child in the public school system. Nothing should get in the way of a child's education. Don't you agree?
Luella is delusional. Funding vouchers will save the lives and educations of the very people she worries about. When public schools are forced to compete for their students, then they will improve the quality of their teaching. This is elementary. Here is a post about how New Zealand did these very things and their failing system improved rapidly.
If you'd paid attention to the earlier post, you'd discover what is crystal clear: the amount of money spent does not determine the quality of the education. Money does not have curative or healing powers. If private schools funded with even less money than the public schools do a better job saving these kids, then the problem is not money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Letting the kids swim in pools of greenbacks like Scrooge McDuck isn't going to do jack to improve their lots in life.
Also, I would say that a responsible parent does not leave the education of their children solely up to the public schools. A responsible parent takes charge of their child's education and makes sure that the kid learns. If you expect the public schools to do everything, you will end up with one ignorant kid.
lindenen August 19, 2004 03:06 AM