The True Cost of Public Education

What is the true cost of public education? According to a new study by the Cato Institute, some of the nation's largest public school districts are underreporting the true cost of government-run education programs.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11432

Cato Education Analyst Adam B. Schaeffer explains that the nations five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia are blurring the numbers on education costs. On average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported. Districts on average spent nearly $18,000 per student and yet claimed to spend just $12,500 last year.

It is impossible to have a public debate about education policy if public schools can't be straight forward about their spending.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Cato
• Institute
• Adam
• Schaeffer
• Education
• Libertarian
• Private
• Policy
• Politics
• Government

[queenofabnormal]

This is why I don't understand the hostility to homeschooling parents. 75% of tax-payers don't use the public schools but they support them. Homeschoolers cost tax-payers 0%. The entire society should be more supportive of homeschooling, based on the amount of money they pay for something they don't use. Thank a homeschooler the next time you run across one for not burdening you with their education expense, instead of asking about socialization.

[dteselle]

Tax payer? Parent of a student? You should be outraged!

[kmelfina]

It's the unions (money given mostly goes to those advertisements and union bosses, not much to teachers). About the banks, they weren't de-regulated. Not one bit. Banks were forced to give loans especially at a time of super low interest rates when receivers of loans do not have savings, especially at a time when our fiat currency is falling in value. Eventually the financial crisis happened when the prices of houses dropped from artificially propped up prices.

[coby2232]

So where is the money going? Into the pockets of those rich, greedy teachers and principals? Are they squirreling it away and putting it into their 1991 Mazda repairs?

If you can't trust school districts who the hell can you trust: Suit freaks like this guy who bundled up your mortgage as a toxic investment? What about the government who de-regulated bank operations? Trust those guys?

Yeah, that's right--public school districts are the enemy! What a joke...

[coby2232]

School Districts and Teachers are the ENEMY. Put them all in jail--like the students who can't buy their way into private education.

[commonsenseradio]

BINGO

[jonescomplete]

I wish tax receipts would say exactly what the money paid for...

[benxr2006]

good god...

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

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- net gains during the crisis by largely forgoing repackaged subprime mortgages (weathering constant punitive legal action to do so) and the new short-term debt papers, in favour relatively traditional and conservative assets.

But most telling of all is the emergence of the shadow banking sector shortly after Basel II. I've read some economic history, but I've never heard of anything like it. The closest thing I know of is the Blat, the organized Soviet black markets.

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

"Regulated?" How much more "regulated" can you get than outright state ownership?

Your characterization of the 2008 financial crisis is completely ahistorical. It happened a few years after a major change in and expansion of the regulatory structure, in a period of severe inflation and credit manipulation, and was most severely felt in the enormously subsidized subprime mortgage sector, Banks like Wells-Fargo were even able to continue making small, consistent -

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