New York State spends $14,000 per student. I think that this is a ridiculous sum of money.
From The NY Times
In its 4-2 ruling, the Court of Appeals noted that a commission appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki in 2004 had contemplated a range of spending options for the state to fulfill its constitutional obligation to New York City’s nearly 1.1 million schoolchildren, with $1.93 billion at the low end of the scale. The court endorsed the $1.93 billion as “reasonable.”
The decision came as an immense blow to New York City, which, based on prior court rulings, had anticipated up to $5.63 billion a year in additional education aid. New York State now pays about $7.1 billion, or roughly 45 percent, of the city’s total education budget of $15.4 billion, the largest local school budget in the country. The court-ordered increase would be on top of this, but the ruling left open the possibility that the state would press the city to contribute to the added financing.
15 400 000 000 / 1 100 000 = 14 000
And look at the quality we are getting for this sum of money. Many of the nyc high school graduates are functionally illiterate. If I had kids I would much rather have the $14,000/year as cash on hand to pay for my child's education than send them to public schools. Hell, private tutoring via Indian educators would probably be better than sending kids to most public schools in NYC. Another point of note - both Joel Klein and Eliot Spitzer - the chancellor of the public school system and the governor elect - send their kids to private schools. Kind of makes me wonder why, if they believe in the ability of the state to educate, do they choose to send their kids to private, for-profit educational institutions? It is well documented that private schools that charge this amount of tuition or less have, on the whole done a decent job of education. If it can be done for less, I don't think the reason kids don't get a good education is because of a lack of funds. The money is there. $14,000 per student is quite a lot of money to spend.