Posted on 12/28/2010 10:29:32 AM PST by MichCapCon
The United States spends more per-pupil on K-12 schooling than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, but American students consistently score at or below average in reading, math and science, according to a report prepared by the Mercatus Center, a research center associated with George Mason University. In the U.S, inflation-adjusted K-12 spending tripled over the last 40 years. In 1970, it cost this country $50,000 to send a child to school for 13 years. By 2009 this had grown to $149,000...
(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfidential.com ...
Just read recently that DC schools spend a total of $26,000 per pupil!! Twenty-six freaking thousand dollars per student!! I spend about $1000 per pupil at our home school.
Bookmark.
I would like to know how much is spent on regular education and then on special education services.
I’d like to know how much those have grown over the years.
Then you could also compare the results to private schools who do not need to provide special education services.
I’d also like to know how much is spent on special education based on different services and on different disabilities. Are we really getting a good bang for the buck on those services? My daughter received special ed services. I think they spent more on administering it than on actually providing the services. I do think the occupational therapy helped her a lot. I think the district should have contracted out the speech therapy to a private therapist. We got a lot more bang for our buck (time wise) with private therapy.
In 1970 the average wage was $6186, in 2009 it was 40,712. A 6x increase, where school costs only increased 3x. SSA source of data
I'm not saying we are getting sufficient education for our money. But to show the costs disparity over 30 years without any frame of reference is misleading.
That number is adjusted for inflation: The figure is in constant 2009 dollars.
Look what has happened to families in the last 40 years. I think that’s the problem. No amount of money can make up for kids who are unready for school because of family problems.
I work in Special Ed in San Jose CA schools. I can tell you first hand that the cost to tax payers to educate Special Ed students can, and often does, triple the cost of educating main stream students. Parents are often the cause of such high cost. Parents who know the legal system, and how to abuse it, get programs that do not necessarily help their child, but add cost to the over all budget. Legal cost, special programs, pull out programs, learning devices, and on and on...... Some work others do not. Bottom line, someone has to pay for it all, that someone is you and me. Bottom of the bottom our schools need to be reformed.
I am actually surprised you had your kids in public school for as long as you did. As one tax payer to another, thank you for taking them out. You sound much more happy with/in the private sector. How does Texas handle Special Ed in their public schools? Maybe Texas is a better fit for your family.
We actually live in San Jose. I grew up in Texas.
San Jose Unified was awful for my daughter. My daughter could not talk until she was 5. When we first put her in the schools, the speech therapist said my daughter was choosing not to talk. I knew that was not the case, but my daughter had not had an MRI. The speech therapist shut up after my daughter’s MRI showed severe brain damage.
We pulled my daughter out for a few years in preschool. We went back in kindegarten. I told the therapist that my daughter had her hearing tested, and it was okay but we were always repeating things to her. The therapist said I was making up problems for my daughter. Then I had an independent evaluation done, and it showed that she had auditory processing problems and had lots of short term memory problems.
We had an IEP after the independent evaluation, and the people that did the independent evaluation recommended more speech therapy and a pull out reading program for my daughter. The district refused and said my daughter was fine. It was interesting because we actually used the independent evaluator that the district had recommended.
Then my daughter was having lots of problems after school in 3rd grade. I didn’t know what was going on. She was having strange meltdowns and grabbing her ears and screaming “shut up, shut up, shut up” in the car after school. She also just kind of lost it.
I explained all of this to the schools and the pediatrician. The principal at the school said I was creating problems for my daughter and basically said I was crazy.
A few months later, my daughter had a grand mal seizure was diagnosed with epilepsy and partial complex seizures. The strange behavior she was having went away after being put on anti-seizure medication.
We put my daughter in a regular private school that had a reading program. It cost $7000/year. We also gave her speech therapy twice a week for $200/week.
All I really wanted from the district was the truth. When we started this adventure, we didn’t know much about kids with brain damage.
When she was put in the program at 3, they should have taught her sign language. That’s what good programs do. We could have communicated with our daughter, and she would have been so much happier and less frustrated.
Thank God, we put her in the reading program at the private school. She now reads above grade level and is doing well in private school, but she would have struggled if we never had put her in the program.
I would have been happy if the district would have even told us that they couldn’t afford to pay for programs. I just needed help knowing what to do.
Thank God also for the internet. I don’t know anyone near me with a child like my daughter. On the internet, I’ve found other parents in similar situations.
I will add that my daughter had very nice teachers that actually tried to help her (and me). They were lovely.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.