The public schools in Washington, D.C. continue to set a record for per pupil costs in the nation. The District has long been the most expensive system in the country and reportedly spends roughly $30,000 per student in a system that continues to produce appalling results in national studies. The latest such study is by the respected National Center for Education Statistics which has found that in 2013 83 percent of the eighth graders in these schools were not “proficient” in reading and 81 percent were not “proficient” in math.
The only improvement is marginal at best. The percentage of students who performed at or above the NAEP Basic level was 57 percent in 2013. This percentage was greater than that in 2011 (51 percent) and in 1998 (44 percent). However, this is an extremely low level of performance and 43 percent are below even that level.
What is equally distressing is that this study went with virtually no mention in Washington. Indeed, the Washington Post gave more attention to the discarding of trash bins than this most recent educational data.
D.C. eighth graders scored an average of 248 out of 500 in reading. Mississippi finished next to last with an average of 253.
DC spends more than twice as other large cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas, though figures vary between studies and reports. The figure is derived from dividing total expenditures in Table 1 by enrollment in Table 15 of the Census Bureau statistics. The Census Bureau’s Table 11 puts the per capital costs for elementary schools at over $27,000 up to 2010. (note that this is a different calculation than Table 8 on per capita spending levels).
New York spends $5,353 less per student.
By the way, of that money, only $10,584 per pupil is spent on “instruction” and $1,613 on “instructional staff.”
Whatever the cost, the D.C. schools continue to fail and thousands of students are facing a dim future without basic skills to succeed. Many will be left to a cycle poverty where they lack the necessary skills to succeed in a new and more demanding job market. It is a chilling statistic that is measured in real terms in the lives of thousands of students.
These statistics are truly frightening. D.C. has a long reputation for wasteful and poorly managed systems. This low level of performance is even more striking when it is between two of the most successful school systems in the country: Montgomery (MD) and Fairfax Counties (VA). Clearly D.C. deals with a large number of impoverished students, but that does not explain this continuing failure of this system at such a high cost. Other cities have such impoverished areas and do far better with far less. The city seems to be continuing to discard thousands of students with the same level of care as its recent trash bin scandal. Yet, there remains no serious backlash against the city’s elected officials or demands for a fundamental change in the school system after decades of such poor performance.
Is the American Enterprise Institute a liberal think tank?
Paul
Don’t forget about the tax credit program that raises money for the more affluent schools but little (or none) for the poorer schools.
Affluent parents and their friends itemize state income tax and can send $200 ($400 per couple) to a school of their choice for non-educational programs – i.e. band or athletics. (There are complaints of mismanagement of those funds.) Low income parents don’t itemize and don’t owe enough to be able to send their tax dollars directly to their children’s school.
I’m not certain, but this policy may have been contested in the courts. The tax credit plan stands.
The tax credit money goes to the schools that attract it. My money goes to a charter school in the inner city of Phoenix.
HuffPo is very liberal, come one!!
30 years
“High stakes testing” started about a decade ago. Public education had been in free fall for 30 decades when testing was implemented, rightfully so, to use as a tool for evaluation.
I’ve been criticized many times for using Huffington Post as a source. BTW, that HuffPo article about school spending was written by someone from the American Enterprise Institute. I guess maybe HuffPo isn’t such a liberal/leftist news source after all.
Your NEA Report was from 2013. Apparently DC schools were not accurately reporting.
Oh, and Cato based it’s report (and so did HuffPo) on a US Census Bureau report.
Feynman:
Here is a HuffPo article that claims that DC has been severely underreporting spending, and that it is actually around $27,000/student:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-mcshane/dc-public-schools-grossly_b_1638663.html
Thanks, Paul. I knew about ADA, but not about the first 100 days. Where do they get funding for the remaining days of instruction?
Karen – your funding for the year ends with the 100th day count, but the money come in until the end of the year.
Mespo,
A main reason for there being less time spent on teaching critical thinking is because of what school reform brought us years ago–the mania for the high stakes testing of children. The over emphasis on prepping kids to take tests has narrowed the curriculum. When teachers pushed back against that over emphasis, they were castigated by the media, by politicians, by many people who didn’t understand what the ramifications would be. I saw what was happening in my own school system after school reform was instituted in my state. It’s the reason that I decided to retire earlier than I had planned.
There is something odd about Prof. Turley’s post that states DC spends almost $30K per student. That is a Cato finding. A Cato blogger found some info in the census reporting that made the figure jump from around $18.6K to that $30K figure. Cato. Who is no friend of public schools. Who is very partisan.
The Washington Examiner, (a right wing newspaper) says the figure is $18,667 for the previous report. Cato says it is now $30K. Something seems wrong. Google it. You will find lots of hits that say the figure is $30K. They are all picking up the Cato report. The $30K is not in line with other years or other states.
Here is the link to the NEA report that politfact used:
http://www.nea.org/assets/img/content/NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates-2013_%282%29.pdf Politifact reported that DC spent $14K per student. I figure it is almost $19K. I think they left out some cost. I used all costs.
Using NEA stats I find the cost per student is $18,791 for 2012-2013 estimates.
Use Table K for cost.= $1.428,450
Used Summary Table B Page 87 for # of students = 76,017
I’m no statistician, but I think I may be close judging by the Washington Examiner figure and the politifact figure. Plus my numbers resemble previous years. The $30K is pretty weird.
Can I have an Amen!!
Elaine:
You’re no tattler, Elaine. That’s a given and you are also right that public schools take all comers — prepared for learning of not. They also come to the public schools motivated or not which makes the public school teacher’s job tougher. That said you can’t discount the power of motivation. We’ve coached kids from special ed programs who perform equally well or better than kids from regular classes. I think learning is what kids all want but we’ve seen way too many teachers who just mail it in in the classroom. And I say this as the son of a school teacher and administrator who represents a lot of teachers and administrators. Our conservative friends here are not wrong when they complain about unions more interested in members than kids. And our liberal friends are not wrong to blame absentee parents and painfully out of touch administrators. The issue is bigger than politics since I’m seeing an ever growing sea of ignorance out there that is affecting how we live and govern ourselves. In my 30 years of watching I think the IQs of the people in charge at every level of authority has dropped by a conservative 20 points. I see more stupid now than ever — from zero tolerance policies to outrageous decision-making. I lay fault for that societal corrosion at the school house door. We’ve quit teaching how to critically think and substituted the palaver of political correctness and sentimentality. Kids need to know what the truth is and how to find it amid all the BS thrown at them by government, industry, and religion. Accomplish that task ANC you have the necessary ingredient for democracy; lose it and condemn yourselves to the servitude of the ignorant.
By golly Paul is right in that Annie.
Thanks, Paul. I was typing faster than my brain on that one! I was thinking Masters.
Oh, and thanks for going fishing, Darren!
Nick, me too! I want a live person who is easy to understand instead of an automated offshore phone tree.
Another issue with offshoring is that some countries pay pittance wages and have labor camps. It is impossible to compete with their cost savings but there are humanitarian concerns. And there can be QC problems, as well.
Darren, I saw a TV ad recently, some techie company, that made it a point to say that their telephone tech support was IN THE US. I will pay extra for someone who speaks English as their primary language when I’m having a technical problem.