Doing the math...

[agilebrit]

So, the school voucher issue is heating up here in good old Utah, with the election being three weeks away. So I decided to get my calculator out and do some theoretical figuring.

I based it on a beginning class size of 30 kids, which was not out of the realm of possibility when I was growing up. I don't remember anyone bitching about class size back then either.

Apparently we spend $7,000 per student, per year, here. That comes to $210,000 per classroom.

Now, say 5 kids leave, and they're on the poorer end of the spectrum, so they get all $3,000 they're entitled to under the proposed voucher program (the actual amount is $500 - $3,000, so I'm being generous here). They take $15,000 out of the classroom, leaving it with 25 kids and $195,000, because that extra $4,000 per kid gets plowed back into the classroom.

Which now comes to $7,800 per pupil in that same classroom.

So...we've reduced class size, and increased the amount we're spending per kid. All without increasing the amount we're actually spending.

Seriously, someone explain to me how this is a bad thing?

Comments

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

Heh. rackham just pointed out to me that if this passes they should actually encourage people to take the vouchers... because imagine a 28 student classroom with 27 of them taking the maximum voucher amount to go to a private school... which would leave $115,000 for that one student.

And yeah, that's really taking it to the extremes, but just shows that you're very, very right. Where, exactly, is the bad?

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that the bad starts once the number of students in say 5 schools goes down far enough that if you make class sizes right up at the maximum you can squeeze all the kids into 4 schools.

You close one school, and save all that money, rather than giving it to the 4 other schools, and so the amount available per child goes right back down again, class sizes go back up, and children have to travel further to school.

Most of the parents who would take advantage of a scheme to pay most of the fees for them to privately educate their kids are going to be the middle-class ones - as it seems, from A-B's calculation that they would still need to provide about $800 per annum. For a poor family with 2 or 3 kids this is not an easy option - so they will keep sending their kids to the state school.

So the possibility is that the state schools start to become what are known in the UK as 'sink schools' - peopled mainly by kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, often with poorer motivation and home support, and with over-full classrooms and so the results go down. Then parents who actually believe in the state system, or who might have thought even with vouchers it was cutting things a bit tight, decide that they don't want their child to be disadvantaged for life by being at that school, so they find some way of getting the money together to go with the voucher and the situation spirals on downward.

This is not inevitable - but when the Thatcher government in the UK decided to 'increase parental choice' this is what happened to quite a number of schools, so lowering the standard of education available to those living in poorer areas.

The trick is to not cut the number of schools, or teachers, as the number of pupils go down. Then the educational standards in those schools actually go up - but politicians know that they will always get more votes for saving money to reduce taxes, and it seems logical to combine schools and save money if pupil numbers are going down.....

If they really are leaving money at the school the child leaves to go private, how long are they leaving it there? Just for that year, when they then recalculate how many pupils the school has, or for the whole time the child would be there?

How do you calculate numbers including all the phantom children who are receiving vouchers - for example if a child, who has never attended the state school, moves house, does his money as a theoretical pupil stay at his original school, or move to another one where he might be a pupil now if he were still in the system? What if one of the non-attending children dies? I have a feeling that any way the paymasters find to save money, they will.