Incredibly low-priced private schools
boston.com
boston.com
20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive rate for both parties I suspect.
This is why actual private schools in the US require strong institutional backing (i.e. a church willing to subsidize them to the tune of millions) or effort commensurate with opening a new factory rather than a new salon.
The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance laws.
That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go.
I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.
I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.
But to delve a little deeper: in California, nearly every municipality of any size requires a special-use permit or conditional use permit (CUP) to build a school. There is no "school" zoning code. Almost never are such permits granted in industrial use areas, despite sometimes being locations that might have little to no risk. That means the school functionally has to get a CUP in a residential zone. Which residents often don't like because, even for a small school, it means a substantial increase in traffic. This is doubly difficult because not only does the school have to fight to receive zoning, but trivial-to-place legal challenges can lead to a huge expense. For instance, challenging zoning for environmental reasons is nearly trivial but an extended environmental impact report alone can cost millions of dollars.
So there's a substantial risk involved in the launch without any option for a quick buyout. Remember, these are almost all 501(c)(3) institutions (I don't know of any that aren't, but I could imagine there are).
The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficiency tests by which educational results could be measured with mirrors, and did not have to deal with unions whose goals seem to be as much about promoting the interests of their members via ever-expansive forms of public funding as they are about helping kids learn. The public high schools I attended in California in the late 1960s were also good, and it was naturally expected in that day that the vast majority of the kids would not only graduate but would also be literate and reasonably taught once they did so - there too, all funding was purely local.
The key is to have the schools, whether public or private, in the hands of people who care really care about what the kids learn and that means local people who know them and know their families. This element has largely been lost in modern America's public schools, and it is a real tragedy.
It is nice to see the resourcefulness of parents who seek to overcome the resulting mess but this is a struggle that is often just plain desperate in light of the overwhelming problems that now beset the public schools. This piece reminds us that there is always hope where people really care.
This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago.
In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.
In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation.
You know what the most common complaint I heard was when these issues went to ballot? "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." What's the phrase about it being impossible to make people understand something that they don't want to?
Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster than the cap.
Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years.
Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground.
> "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage."
Since that's how govts actually behave....
Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the "cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list.
Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have to look at the amounts for the various items.
There was no money. It was a choice between raising taxes or cutting services.
And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our services hostage!"
Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
RE: the percentages, the deal is that the total local property tax take goes up by 2.5% a year. If your property increases in assessed value, you might see personal increase of more than that but someone else saw an increase of less to make up for it.
0 money? Really? I'll bet that it was really just not enough to pay for what the pols wanted to do.
If the latter, they could fund some services. That's why I said to look at what they protected and what they said that they'd cut if they didn't get more money.
If you do that, you'll discover that they're protecting some things that should have a lower priority than things that they put on the "cut" list.
> And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our services hostage!"
Since they're saying that they don't have enough money for police and fire protection but do for lesser things, why is it wrong to characterize that as "holding our services hostage"? What is an acceptable way to criticise that behavior?
Or, are you claiming that they should always get enough money for whatever they want?
> Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact.
Yup, it's a fact. If you have $100 and what you want costs $200, you need to scale back your wants.
The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities and whine that you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.
> Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
Huh? The fact that some govt wants to do something does not obligate me to pay for it.
It was simple arithmetic, a choice between letting teachers go or raising taxes.
What many people did for selfish reasons, and you're doing for ideological purity reasons, is attempt to change the debate to some abstract notion of "government spending my money". Hey buddy, it's your kids in the schools, and you even get to vote on the tax increase. Just don't call me a jerk or a liar -- I'm giving it to you straight.
Quote anamax : The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities and whine that you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.
Which lower priorities was I wasting money on here, exactly? You're the expert. And I'm sure there weren't any state or federal mandates involved, legal obligations or anything like that. "jerk" behavior is refusing to educate yourself on things and hand-waving away instead so you can keep your nice simple universe. Mental shortcuts will always lead to uninformed opinions.
Somehow I doubt that teacher salaries were your only expense. I doubt that teacher salaries were even your only not-mandated expense. (As to "mandated", I've found that some of the "mandates" are an excuse. Yes, I've done this exercise before.)
A 20% reduction in income can be painful, but in a world where lots of people are taking a bigger hit....
Your tax base took a hit because people took a huge hit, yet for some reason you think that teachers should be spared. Other folks take a pay cut and lose jobs, but ....
Which reminds me, do those teachers have defined benefit pensions? Are they fully funded? Few folks in the private sector have such pensions and none of them have taxpayer guarantees.
And yes, I noticed that you ducked my questions about budget components. As I wrote, I've gone through this before.
You're still doing it here. Did you read my earlier comments about how the property tax is assessed and collected? If you had, you wouldn't be talking about how the tax base took a "hit".
You claimed that you didn't have enough money to pay teachers. There are three ways to get into that situation.
(1) The amount of money that you're paying teachers (as a whole) has gone up. (2) You have less money than you had last year.
(1) is dumb unless you have more money coming in, which leaves (2). Should I have assumed dumb?
> Did you read my earlier comments about how the property tax is assessed and collected?
Yes, I did. The total amount of property tax collected can go down if the total assessed value of property goes down. Of course, not all of that property tax revenue goes for teacher salaries, so it's possible for the teacher salary budget to go down when the property tax revenues don't change.
Anad that gets us back to priorities. When total tax revenues go down (or new spending comes in that exceeds new revenues), govts make two lists - things that they threaten to cut and things that they don't threaten to cut. The composition of those two lists tells you want they think is valuable.
If your "teacher salary budget" got cut, it's because something else didn't get cut. Why do I keep saying that? Because property tax revenues pay for more than just teacher salaries.
http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...
A) (perception), unions are more concerned with benefits for their members than educating their kids. Uh... so? Who else is going to advocate for them? They have to eat too, and every small town in America trots out a bunch of reaganish bullcrap about how the school system should be able to do more with less but they all expect a raise in their private sector job if they're doing well. We drop our kids off at school for the day, drive to work on clean, safe streets, and then bitch about how the public sector employees should get by with no yearly raise, without even bothering to inform ourselves about our local budget.
B) (reality) Unions are oftentimes more concerned with the preservation of power, access and position for the top union officials than they are with either the benefits for their members or the quality of education, except for cases where the latter two feed into the first (fortunately, fairly often). This is how it actually works. Unions have their problems but it's not because the teachers are greedy -- teachers are already doing a difficult job for low pay, presumably because they care about education. Anyone who whines about unions or about teachers expecting a fair pay check is free to try it for a few years - last I checked there's a huge shortage of qualified math and science teachers.
This could be because of bad teachers, bad parents, stupid/unteachable children, etc, but the unions' only solution is always "more money." Is it unreasonable to think, then, that the unions are acting in bad faith? The teachers are the only ones who get to elect the union leaders so they are responsible, directly or indirectly.
There's a huge shortage of qualified teachers because of the nonsense teachers ed requirements for certifying teachers. You've probably seen many articles on how ridiculous and shoddy these curricula are. These requirements exist at the behest of the unions to protect their members from competition.
> The four smart women were resourceful. Moving from the beautiful castle-like school building at Wroxeter they found they were in need of basic furniture for classrooms and bartered for desks and chairs with local schools. They were conscious of fiscal needs and worked with generous families to administer the school’s financial resources.
> They wrote curriculum, taught classes and worked with their faculty to lay the groundwork for the individualized curriculum and the active learning philosophy Chesapeake Academy champions today. The four smart women were visionary. They embraced technology as an educational resource, while Apple® computer company was just finding its' way into the school marketplace.
http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=10367...
Patricia Troy is the mother of Dave Troy, a local entrepreneur, and she did exactly what you're proposing.
I'm starting to develop a theory that governments are efficient, even very much so, except to another metric. The US Gov's Education Department metric seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions", not financial efficiency. And at that, they are very good.
The two biggest problems any teacher I know can find with the current public school system are:
1. Over reliance on standardized test as the only metric of education. Making it difficult to teach kids engaging material in various subjects (Nope, can't cover history's 10 craziest revolutions, have to cover the civil war for the tenth time) because there is so much that they have to learn specifically.
2. A lack of any real power.
True story: My mom once gave a child an F in english, he had a course average of 20%, the child's mom came in complained that her child COULD NOT go to summer school because they had a trip to europe already planned and booked, threatened a law suit and the principle made my mom raise change it to a D.
Another: in Florida at least it had become so difficult to hold a child back a grade in middle school that freshman were coming into high school who hadn't passed 5th grade reading tests. 14% of the freshman one year were functionally illiterate.
Neither of those had anything to do with "government inefficiency." It's the mandate to educate everyone. A private school can have very specific terms and as long as they got a good lawyer to draw up the contract the parents don't have a leg to stand on if the private school kicks their kid out, flunks them, holds them back, gives the detention etc.
EDIT: note that when I a lack of power I mean over academic matters. Recently the supreme court said strip searching a 14 year old girl in front of the male principle because she had Tylenol in her purse was okay. That's some terrifying power.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent. They often get defined benefit pensions, earlier retirement than other professionals, tenure and 2-3 months vacation.
http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...
Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes the Y students?
Quoth the BLS:
Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10 percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to $80,970.
You can scroll down the list of occupations and see some folks who get paid less than teachers. It is an eye-opener in some cases (firefighters make less than middle school teachers? Really? Whoa.)
Also yes firefighters earn terrifyingly low salaries, so do cops and a lot of other government funded position necessary for the continued survival of civilization
Also, the base pay of a teacher in NYC with 20 years experience is $83,000 (with pay going up if they have degrees). $83k/year for 39 hours/week, 9 months a year is not bad, even by NYC standards. (It's equivalent to $99k/year working all year.).
http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro...
They also get to retire at 55 with a full pension, assuming they started work at 25. So you need to factor in the value of those extra years of pension, and fewer years of work to get it.
That said while I feel that the people in charge of making sure the next generation is capable of progressing society should probably get paid more than they do, I'm not going to claim that doubling teacher salaries would really help anything. I only made that comment in response to the idea that the "Gov's Education Department metric seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions"... And at that, they are very good."
>>Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes the Y students?
I'm not arguing against private schools categorically, more so I'm sticking up for the public education system. That said 1. I'm generally a big proponent of heterogeneity in peer groups 2. It's not that public schools are better at educating Y, it's that private schools are often unwilling to.
Private schools, by contrast, have no obligation to accommodate disabled students. For that matter, they’re more or less free to say “there’s nothing wrong with your child, but s/he wouldn’t fit in to our school”.
That depends on your jurisdiction. For example, you've indicated you live in Massachusetts. Two minutes of Googling found that 151C (e) makes it unlawful for private schools to refuse admission to the blind, deaf, and students requiring use of dog guides. That is one law. I would not wager it is the extent of regulations on the matter.
I don't know about the US but private schools here in the UK are rather more than that (we pay a total of about $15K a year).
According to the U.S. Census, U.S. public schools spent $9,138 per student in 2006. This varies from $14,884 in New York to $5,437 in Utah:
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/ed...
According to the council for private education, the average private school tuition in the U.S. for 2007-2008 was $8,549 at all levels, and $6,733 at elementary level. Non-religious schools were significantly more expensive than religiously-affiliated schools:
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html
It would be hard to directly compare spending because one school might offer more than another. For example, a private school in Orange County, California, may provide laptops to all students, expensive science labs, and fancy football fields (and would have to pay a lot for land), while a public school in rural Nevada may not have any of that stuff. That wouldn't prove that private education was more expensive or less efficient, just that the people in one region wanted different things and were willing to pay more for those things.
The cost for our children at a Catholic elementary school here in the U.S. is about half that.
It seems that one of the advantages that a public program could have in volatile areas is some manner of centralized curriculum oversight. How are private schools in the US regulated to prevent similar situations (if they are at all)?
2. Curriculum oversight is just another way of saying state sponsored indoctrination.
3. If parents believe that the schools are better than the alternatives, what right does anybody else have to butt in? In the American case they already pay for them through (local property) taxes anyway so they probably have good reason to pay a second time for the private version.
4. Would you support the abolition of the Amish's special privileges under which children are withdrawn from formal education at ~14, in contrast to the normal school leaving age? Why are they even allowed to have their own schools? After all they're weird religious fanatics with a self-perpetuating sub-culture, shouldn't we break that up and force them to assimilate by making their children go to schools with normal children? [Not actually a USAn]
As to private school oversight, I imagine it varies by state like the position on homeschooling. But the big discipliner is that parents can take their children out. they have real right of exit, to a far greater extent than with public schools
I am not going to respond to your second point... I think that is a point of debate that you're making out to be far more black-and-white than it really is.
There is further complexity than you are admitting in your last two examples. There is a broad-reaching social impact that schooling, or lack thereof, has. This is true locally as well as globally, as seen by what the Wahhabi schools produce. Would I oppose the Amish exemption? No, because the vast majority of students in this nation have access to basic education. Would I oppose a private school system that was teaching violent fundamentalism at the expense of basic education, if that system was the only option serving a large area of my country? You bet I would, and that goes for government or private systems.
Again: this is a complicated issue -- and no one should pretend otherwise. It is a false dichotomy to declare that our options are "state sponsored indoctrination" and forcible assimilation, or a free-market utopia where parents pick what school works best for them. A non-trivial number of people would pick the degree mill school given the choice: I am trying to figure out how we disincentive that option in an areas that don't have the social infrastructure to stigmatize that decision.
As to the state sponsored indoctrination bit, whether it's explicitly planned or comes about organically through political bargaining between those with the power and those with the strongly held opinions who are willing to fight for it, it happens anyway. You cannot avoid having a value system, and if you do not perpetuate it, it will be outcompeted by one that will.
I'm not denying complexity, I'm providing extreme examples as aids to thought. Look at the two ends of the spectrum and ask "What does my previously implicit value system say in these extreme cases?"
Would I oppose the Amish exemption? No, because the vast majority of students in this nation have access to basic education.
But don't the Amish children deserve to have the option to partake in broader society? And won't they have more and better information upon which to condition that choice if they attend government run schools until the normal school leaving age? Aren't they being harmed by being denied that opportunity?
teaching violent fundamentalism at the expense of basic education
What's violent fundamentalism? What's basic education? If the violent fundamentalists are the only ones providing education of any sort, a minimum of literacy for example, isn't that better than nothing for the vast majority of those who receive it who never do crap with the violent bit of the fundamentalism but who can read and write and probably do arithmetic when their chances to do so otherwise would have been much less?
On degree mills; what's wrong with a solely instructional institution that certifies competence in a given area? Most people don't give a damn about education as growth for the soul, why should they subsidise those who do, and help perpetuate a costly signalling mechanism that is socially wasteful if an alternative exists?
Yes, the particular systems I'm referring to are bad, in my opinion. My base principles for making that assumption is that educational systems should not deny education to women, promote violence, or provide educations based on faith and mythology. If that is a purely moral viewpoint, so be it: we do not live in an objective world, and you're free to disagree with me.
But that is /not/ the point I'm trying to make here. Moreover, these are just an example of a potential failing of private schools. I could imagine several ways to defraud parents of the education they think they're paying for. My conclusion it's unclear what the incentive system for private schools to provide "quality" education (from the point of view of parents, students, and society as a whole) in an area where little or no educational institutions have existed before, and where institutions (public or private) do not exist to allow families to make informed decisions about the schools they're sending their kids to. It's a basic problem of incomplete information available to clients of these schools, that's all: can we (or someone else) come up with a way to allow families in these areas to make sure that the school they're paying is actually providing the education they're expecting to receive?
> what's wrong with a solely instructional institution that certifies competence in a given area? I am referring to fraudulent organizations that award degrees based solely on payment, and provide no actual education, classes, instruction, etc. The system we have may be flawed but these do not do anything constructive to change it.
In practice, market forces do a decent (though not perfect) job: most private schools want to produce students who have a chance of getting into a good college, and one of the more effective ways to convince colleges you aren't insane is to: 1) have your students do well on standardized tests like the SAT; and/or 2) be accredited by an organization like the National Association of Independent Schools.
And of course in those nasty state the powerful hire their own militia (private security) anyway.