School spending
Dave S’s comment on my school post — saying that Arlington county spends $19,000 per student — sent me googling to look up school spending per pupil in the area. I think his numbers are a little high — but only a little. According to this anti-tax website, the superintendent’s budget calls for spending of $17,923 per student in FY 2007.
Another post on the same site sent me to the Washington Area Boards of Education, which puts out this nifty comparison of spending in most of the suburban districts surrounding Washington DC. According to this site (page 29 of the report), in FY 2006, Arlington topped the local school districts for spending at $16,464 per student, followed closely by Falls Church City at $16,020 and Alexandria $15,871. Montgomery County and Fairfax County — the two huge, highly regarded school systems in the area — come next, at $12,549 and $11,915 respectively. All of these figures are way above the national average, which is a bit over $8,000
I found this fascinating, because it suggests a) that the high spending levels aren’t solely being driven by the overall cost of living in the DC metropolitan area and b) that the systems with the best reputations aren’t necessarily those spending the most. So what’s going on? A few things jumped out from the report. Alexandria seems to have particularly low class sizes, especially in the lower grades. Arlington seems to pay teachers better than average. Both have lots of small schools, which probably pushes up overhead costs. Fairfax seems to do a particularly good job of limiting the number of staff who aren’t school-based. (Alexandria seems to have an habit of promoting good principals into system-wide positions, which I think is probably a mistake.) Alexandria and Arlington both have significantly higher proportions of students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches (e.g. low-income families) and higher proportions of English as a second language students than Fairfax does. It’s not in the report, but I know that all Alexandria schools have full-day kindergarten, but only some Fairfax schools do. I couldn’t figure out from the report how they were handling capital costs — I know that both Alexandria and Arlington have undertaken major renovations/rebuilding of high schools in recent years.
What about DC? It’s not included in this report, but I found a Parents United study that attempted to calculate its spending on the same basis as the surrounding suburbs. This study suggests that DC spends about as much per student as Montgomery and Fairfax, but serves a much needier student population, and with antiquated facilities that both require much higher utilities and demand more capital investment.
April 12th, 2006 at 8:37 am
According to the local paper, the census bureau issued its report on per-student school funding for 2004 last week. They reported that the District spent $12,801 per student, ranking it third among states for overall per-student spending. Which raises a frightening question about per-student spending in rural Virginia and Maryland, for those two states’ suburban DC levels of funding to average out so low as to drop them out of the top five.
North Carolina ranks 42nd for student funding, at $6702 per student. Chapel Hill-Carrboro spends $9023 per student; Wake County, where many of the suburban schools are now considered on par with Chapel Hill’s prior status as “best in the state,” spends $6768. I’d imagine that facilities costs (especially heating and cooling) explain a portion of the lower spending in the best NC districts: it’s remarkable how much lower home heating and cooling costs here, at least. And then there’s the wages discrepancy, sigh.
I don’t have time to track this down at http://www.census.gov but here’s the local news report:
http://www.newsobserver.com/146/story/425255.html
April 12th, 2006 at 9:20 am
It would be interesting to compare what percentage of each district’s annual budget goes to special education costs. I know that there are very high numbers of special education students in Arlington; in fact, I know many parents who moved to Arlington because they had special needs children and they knew that Arlington schools had a stellar reputation for educating children with disabilities. A high special education population — plus a special education population which has a higher proportion of students with VERY expensive needs rather than mild learning disabilities — can drive up the average per pupil expenditure enormously.
That said, Arlington schools are IMO the best in the area.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:25 am
The $19,000 per pupil (or $18,000) figure didn’t strike me as extremely high, but as was mentioned (I think by bj) earlier, that’s probably because I’ve been de-sensitized by daycare. Our daycare tuition costs for 2 kids last year, in a federally subsidized daycare center in the DC metro area, with a price break for the second kid, were around $26,000. As Amy said yesterday, I look at the money we’ll NOT be spending by sending my son to public kindergarten and rejoice! I can’t wait for September, financially.
(Tangent Alert) I read somewhere – I think on the Legal Momentum website? – that the average cost of a year of daycare in every state is higher than the average cost of a year attending the state’s public university. But, despite all the talk of saving for college, “they” never tell you you should save up for daycare, too.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Close to $20K does sound high to me. I checked for Colorado–my new state–and found it spends under $10K per pupil, at least for the most recent years I can find. I understand it has gone down in the recent past because of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) law. Hawaii, the state I moved from, spends about the same. That puts them in the middle of the state rankings, I believe.
We pay around $10K per child for our children’s private Montessori, so our tuition lines up with public school spending. However, Denver Public Schools have higher costs for special education and for administration than the private school, so we’re likely getting more value out of the same spending: better teacher-student ratios, more special classes (art, phys ed., foreign language), etc. than we would otherwise. I guess those are some reasons people might choose private schools, in response to some of the comments on your public school vs. private school post.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Now that’s getting down to the nitty-gritty. I had no idea the costs of public vs private per student were so comparable.
I agree that special Ed probably plays a big role.
Still it’s important to remember that the cost of a private school is much higher once you factor in that parents have already paid tax money for the public school. So perhaps we should be thanking them for contributing to yet not draining public resources. (I suppose that’s why some people support school vouchers.)
Now I’ve confused myself. 😉
April 12th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
You nerd, Elizabeth. 🙂 Thanks.
April 12th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
In Washington state, the state average is about 7000/pupil (which incidentally, is funded 70% by state revenues, rather than local revenues), while Seattle’s averages is 10,000/pupil. The private schools cost 15,000, so there’s 50% greater /pupil student expenditures in private schools (and I’m talking about the “independent schools” here, not the religious schools).
One of the interesting things in Elizabeth’s data is that Maryland relies on mostly state-based funding (like Washington state), while the Virginia counties seem to have a different system.
April 13th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Half of Fairfax County’s elementary schools have full day Kindergarten. And apparently the “jury is still out” on full day Kindergarten (as implemented in Fairfax County) as compared to students in half day Kindergarten. See the implementation study in the April 3 2006 School Board Work Session. Here’s an attempt at a link:
http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/ecabb7e97b0992ab85256e56000c1bea/b1598e7f20e13c8a8525712c00578d93?OpenDocument
or a tiny one:
http://tinyurl.com/rsdow
April 18th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Wanted to add this link to a Brad Plumer post about military schools and spending:
http://plumer.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_plumer_archive.html#114472079420647315
I wonder how military schools handle the special education issue.
I went to NYC schools with pretty big class sizes, but there was also a lot of tracking going on. I’m pretty sure it’s easier to teach to a big class if everyone’s at close to the same academic level.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:11 am
http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2006/05/07/arlington/news/nws971.txt
Maybe I was high before, but I’m sure not high now!