Public vs. Private Schools

Following up on posts by Arnold Kling, Tyler Cowen, and myself on the desirability of opening up public education more fully to competition, Andrew Coulson at Cato had this to say (emphasis me):

There’s a common perception in this country that public schools are underfunded, and that if they could only spend as much as private schools do, they’d be in clover. When it is pointed out that the average private school tuition is around half of total public school spending per pupil, defenders of the status quo counter that tuition only covers a fraction of total costs.

So wouldn’t it be interesting to know how much private schools actually spend, in total, per pupil? Well now we do, at least for the state of Arizona.

In a study released yesterday by the Goldwater Institute, I analyze the results of their most recent private school survey. Among the other fascinating findings is that public schools spend one-and-a-half times as much per pupil as do private schools. Or, looked at the other way, private schools spend a third less than public schools.

Some other fascinating tidbits:

Teachers make up 72 percent of on-site staff in Arizona’s independent education sector, but less than half of on-site staff in the public sector.

Arizona independent school teachers earned the equivalent of $36,456 in 2004.  [The]  state’s public school teachers [[salary] was around $60,000.

Public school lobbyists claim they need loads more money to repair and maintain their buildings, so it’d be interesting to know how private schools cope with this issue on a fraction of the public sector’s budget, hmm?

Some interesting questions and it would be great to find out the answers!

There are some public schools, predominantly in middle and upper income regions that are decent, but these seem to be more and more the exception rather than the rule.  As this study illustrates, the problem is not that there's not enough money.  The problem is that the entire system is broken.  How many generations of American children have to have their futures sacrificed before we're willing to ask some hard questions and take stern measures to reform our educational system?

See more on the state of public education in middle and lower income areas in this post on "Stupid in America" and watch the corresponding video below: