However, the cost premium of public schools is almost certainly larger than 58 percent. This is because government data on public school spending excludes some key items.
Historical Data
In a 1995 working paper, the Department of Education (DOE) estimated that “total expenditures for private schools in 1991–92 (including operating expenses and capital) were between $18.0 and $19.4 billion,” and the cost per student was “between $3,350 and $3,600.”Comparing those figures, the average cost of public school education in 1991–92 was about 56–68 percent more than private school.
Just Facts’ Methodology
To determine the cost of private schools, Just Facts measures all income to them, including tuition payments, charitable donations, and government spending on private school programs. This is accomplished by summing federal data on:- personal consumption expenditures—the “primary measure of consumer spending on goods and services,” including all spending by “households and by nonprofit institutions serving households.”
- gross private domestic investment—a measure of private business spending on “structures, equipment, and intellectual property products.”
- total government expenditures on “private school programs.”
Incidentally, 75 percent isn’t far from the DOE’s estimate of a 56–68 percent cost premium for public schools in the 1991–92 school year.
- “The main area of concern in the data for Catholic elementary and secondary schools is the response rate: each had a response rate far below 100 percent. (The response rate for the elementary survey was just above 50 percent, and for the secondary survey it was about 57 percent.)”
- “In addition, our use of region as a proxy for geographic variation may be somewhat crude.”
- “The principal caveat that needs to be attached to our estimates is that we are uncertain about the specific expenditures school officials included in their responses to the survey items we relied on in our analysis.”
- “Nor do we know whether most schools responded to the survey items on the basis of a formal school budget or on the basis of less formal materials.”
Students With Disabilities
Per-pupil spending on students with disabilities is roughly 1.9 times that of typical students. Because a disproportionate share of students with disabilities are enrolled in regular public schools, this increases public school spending relative to private schools.Unmeasured Costs
The cost premium for public schools is likely greater than 58 percent because the DOE’s data on public school spending doesn’t account for certain expenses. These include:- state government spending on administration.
- the unfunded liabilities of pensions for government employees.
- the costs of post-employment non-pension benefits (like health insurance) for government employees.
The State of Public Education
The performance of schools has major consequences for the well-being of children, as well as the fabric of the nation. The father of the U.S. public education system, Horace Mann, was profoundly aware of these stakes but failed to foresee how his vision would unfold. In 1841, he declared that public schools are “the greatest discovery ever made by man,” and if they were “worked with the efficiency” of which they are capable:“nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.”
- only 37 percent of U.S. residents aged 16 and older can correctly answer a question that requires basic logic, addition, and division.
- only 22 percent of the college-bound high school students who take the ACT exam meet its college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math, and science).
- two-thirds to three-quarters of all young adults in the U.S. are unqualified for military service because of poor physical fitness, weak educational skills, illegal drug use, medical conditions, or criminal records.
- the drug overdose death rate has quintupled since 2000, and if it remains at the current level, one in every 40 people in the U.S. will ultimately die of a drug overdose.
- 15-year-old U.S. students rank 31st among 37 developed nations in math, even though the U.S. spends an average of 38 percent more per K-12 student than other developed nations.
Competition and School Choice
One of the most effective and time-tested ways to improve products and services is competition. Explaining why this is so, the textbook “Economics: Private and Public Choice” states:Competition is a disciplining force for both buyers and sellers. In a competitive environment, producers must provide goods at a low cost and serve the interests of consumers; if they don’t, other suppliers will. … This process leads to improved products and production methods and directs resources toward projects that create more value. It is a powerful stimulus for economic progress.
Much of the debate over school choice is based on the premise that there is a public monopoly over the provision of schooling and that schools are inefficient, in part, because of the absence of competition. If families could be treated as consumers and had the right to freely choose which kind of education they would prefer for their children, choice advocates assert that both government and non-government schools would improve...
- At least 22 high-quality studies have been performed on the academic outcomes of students who remain in public schools that are subject to school choice programs. All but one found neutral-to-positive results, and none found negative results.
- A gold-standard experimental study published by the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2011 found that high-risk male youth who won a school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina “commit about 50 percent less crime” across several different outcome measures and scalings of crime by severity.
- Among 23 experimental (or quasi-experimental) studies that have been conducted on the academic outcomes of students who experience school choice:
- 13 found statistically significant positive effects.
- 6 found no statistically significant effects.
- 3 found statistically significant negative effects.
The Money Drainage Myth
While ignoring all evidence on the benefits of school choice, teachers unions and politicians like Bernie Sanders argue that school choice harms public schools by draining funds from them. The polar opposite is true.That’s why a school with only 1,000 students would be better funded than a school with 2,000 students if they both received the same total funding. It’s the funding per student that matters, not the funding per school.
Private school choice boosts per-pupil funding in public schools because the public schools no longer educate the students who go to private schools—which spend much less per student than public schools. This leaves additional funding for the students who remain in public schools.
For each non-disabled public school student who moves to a private school, the cost to educate her declines from an average of about $16,000/year to $10,000. This leaves an extra $6,000 in funds for the public school to spend on the remaining students. The savings can be even greater if the law caps the amount of money for private schools to less than $10,000.