[quote=AN]CAR, did you skip over the class size point on purpose or accident? You’re comparing apple to oranges. Why not compare well off areas vs good private schools? Again, the class size is still smaller for private school vs the public school in rich areas and some are charging less than we are paying per student in public school.[/quote]
Sorry, that was not intentional. I’m not sure how private schools calculate costs, but the ones I’m familiar with strongly “encourage” parents to contribute a lot of money outside of the official tuition. This is also done at public schools, but only those with a higher-SES population.
The low-income schools get much more funding, but as a condition of some of that funding, they are not allowed to ask for any financial support from parents, to the extent that they are not even able to ask parents to supply a single pencil or piece of paper. The students at these low-income schools also tend to get 100% free breakfasts and lunches, and I’m not sure how that’s calculated in there, either. You also have to add the cost for special education, which can be EXTREMELY expensive — the vast majority of private schools do not offer any kind of special ed.
Just for example, my former school employed a full-time nurse, full-time psychologist, full-time bilingual coordinator, 2-3 full-time vice principals, three full-time secretaries, a full-time attendance coordinator, a full-time P.E. teacher, etc. We also had various resource teachers and other support staff on P/T schedules. We had these positions at our school because we had more students than most schools, and because of our low-income, and mostly “bilingual/ELL” population. ALL books, school supplies, breakfasts, lunches, etc. were supplied by the school — parents had to pay nothing.
The public schools, especially those who serve low-income populations, most definitely cost more than the “rich” private schools, and for good reasons. They take care of all the **expensive** students that the private schools can’t or won’t take.
In order to compare apples-to-apples, we’d need to know exactly how much the private schools and high-income public schools take in from parents, corporate/business sponsors, and other revenue sources. I’m not sure where we could find those numbers.
The numbers you see for public school costs would include both the high-income and low-income schools. Additionally, California public schools (and maybe some other states) have seen a radical shift in student demographics. Forty years ago, the majority of students were middle-class whites. Now, the majority of students are Hispanic — many of whom are low-income and/or English Language Learners.
Here, you can see the numbers of students who are ELLs (English Language Learners/not fluent in English) from 1993-2000. Look at the numbers for the Spanish-speaking population.
Also, the death knell for public schools in California was when they started the desegregation/busing policies in the 1970s. Not sure if you were around at the time, but the vast majority of middle/upper-class parents I knew pulled their kids out of the public school system and put them into private schools as a result. The public school system in California never recovered from that, IMHO.
Some history (about Pasadena SD, but this happened everywhere):
In 1971, in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court ordered the forced busing of poor black students to suburban white schools, and suburban white students to the city to try to integrate student populations. In the case of Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the dissenting Justice William Douglas observed that “the inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer. . . .” Likewise, in 1977, the Federal decision in Penick v. The Columbus Board of Education (1977) accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio. Although the racial desegregation of schools affected only public school districts, the most vehement opponents of racial desegregation have sometimes been whites whose children attended private schools.{{!<--Where? When? This covers more than 20 years and specifics are important-->!}}[32][33]
A secondary, non-geographic consequence of school desegregation and busing was “cultural” white flight: withdrawing white children from the mixed-race public school system and sending them to private schools unaffected by U.S. federal integration laws. In 1970, when the United States District Court for the Central District of California ordered the Pasadena Unified School District desegregated, the white-student proportion (54%) of the schools approximately reflected the school district’s proportional white populace (53%). Once the federally ordered school desegregation began, whites who could afford private schools withdrew their children from the racially diverse Pasadena public school system. By 2004, Pasadena had 63 private schools educating some 33% of schoolchildren, while white students made up only 16% of the public school populace.
When one understands the demographic shifts that have been going on in California’s public schools, one can understand why our scores have been going down over time. We’ve created a situation where we’ve largely emptied the public schools of the students who are most likely to succeed, and filled them with low-income, low-performing, high-needs students. Yes, these students cost FAR more than their higher-income (and everything that goes with that) peers in private and high-income schools.
IMHO, vouchers would only exacerbate this problem because the only kids who would be left in public schools are the ones whose parents don’t care, or aren’t capable of researching and sending them to better schools (for physical, financial, mental, or emotional reasons).
