Public Schools are DEAD! Just give $5,000 voucher per child

Discussion in 'Politics' started by bond_trad3r, May 14, 2011.

  1. I'm not trolling, I'm 100% serious.

    It cost $10,000 per annum or more to educate a child for a signle year in the public system. Some public schools are little more than daycares. Private sector could do a 1000 times better in educating children at a much lower cost.

    Get ride of all the boards of education and instead have corporations competing for the school vouchers.
     
  2. Might not be a bad idea but most private schools that I know of cost a lot more then 5,000 a year
     
  3. In Southern California, $10k per year per student is just the annual operating costs. If you add in capital expendiditures it's well over $20k per year per student in many cities. We send our kids to a private school where the total annual cost per student is about $13.5k and the education they get is far superior to any public school in the state.

     
  4. $10K in cali? way off.. get a load of: Los Angeles Public School Named After Robert Kennedy Costs $578 Million

    http://abcnews.go.com/WN/public-school-los-angeles-named-robert-kennedy-expensive/story?id=11462095

    The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will house 4,200 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

    The facility boasts a state-of-the-art swimming pool, fine art murals, an ornate auditorium suitable for hosting the Oscars, and a faculty dining room that the superintendent says is "better than most restaurants."

    All those amenities add up to an enormous price tag, which works out to about $250,000 per pupil.

    Critics say the school is a luxury that the Los Angeles Unified School District cannot afford. The district has a $640 million budget shortfall, and over the past two years, 3,000 teachers have been laid off. The district has even proposed shortening the school year by six days to save money.

    The money troubles come on top of the district's serious academic shortfalls. With a dropout rate upwards of 35 percent, LA Unified is one of the lowest-performing school districts in America.


    The money for school construction comes from voter-approved bonds, an account that is totally separate from what is budgeted for textbooks and teachers.

    "The money can only be spent for that building," LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said. "That's what the voters said."

    The new facility is just the latest so-called "Taj Mahal" school in LA. There's also a $377 million Roybal Learning Center, and there's the new $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School.

    "Taj Mahal" Schools a Nationwide Trend

    But Los Angeles is hardly alone in its taste for expensive schools. In New York City, there's a $235 million campus. In Brunswick, N.J., $185 million was spent for a high school, and Newton, Mass., topped that figure with a $197 million for a new high school.
     
  5. It's around $17k a kid including pension costs and other benefits for teachers, personnel.
     

  6. The private school at my church charges $4800 per year for K-6 and $5k per year for 7th-8th grade. You get 5% discount if you pay upfront, and 5% discount for each extra child you have. It might be that cheap because they ask all families to donate volunteer hours every year to help meet goals. The school is very nice and definately the cleanest school I've ever seen in my life.
     
  7. Private sector could do so much better than the public system. Really, it would be impossible for the public system to get worse in some inner cities.
     
  8. religious education gives you this:

    On the other end are Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists. In each case, 20 percent or fewer of followers made at least $75,000.
    http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/05/15/magazine/15-Leonhardt.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/magazine/is-your-religion-your-financial-destiny.html?_r=2
     
  9. elon

    elon

    Problem #1: School is mandatory. It stifles creativity. The power of choice has been thoroughly ignored.

    Problem #2: Schooling does not teach our children how to support themselves.

    You teach a kid to follow the system for 20 years while being forced to work on problems that have already been solved. Now when he's done with the process, what's he going to do? Try something completely new like start his own business? He has never dealt with that amount of uncertainty. Find a job? In a time when unemployment is at a high?

    He will continue to look to the system for support. Hence the high rate of welfare and unemployment checks.