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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Let's walk through the math to see if it's actually special needs that's jacking the average up to $30k per student from the $11k being claimed...

DCPS overall budget numbers indicate that they are spending around $2.9 million for every 100 students in the system.

The argument in this thread has been that it only costs $11k per student, but the average is higher because of special needs.

Based on NCES data, typically around 13% of a student body will be special needs students.  So for every 100, typically 13 will be special needs, 87 will not.

If it's supposedly $11k per student normally, that means that with 87 non-special-needs students out of every 100 students that would entail a cost of $957,000 for 87 out of the $2.9 million being spent for 100, so presumably that means $1,943,000 is the cost of educating the remaining 13 special needs kids - which works out to be an average cost of $149,460 per special needs student.

Is that really the argument folks are making when they defend the $11k per student figure and point to the remainder of the cost as being because of special needs?[/quote]

Good math. Very poor reading comprehension. Lack of analysis.for example, where are DCPS overhead costs?[/quote]

Bingo!  It wasn't poor reading comprehension, I intentionally laid a trap there by demonstrating that it would have to take a whole lot more than just special needs kids to arrive at the average of $30k being spent per student in the DCPS system.  Yes, special needs kids contribute some additional cost but it's nowhere near enough to raise the average cost to $30k per student, so the argument that it's all because of special needs kids simply does not hold water.

So now we are back to my original point - as I said before, the DCPS school budget fact sheets showing $11k are grossly underreporting, as they do not include facility costs, overhead, textbooks, school lunches or any of the other additional costs incurred at each school - and many of those are big ticket items - whereas for charters, their budgets show EVERYTHING.

So, the attempt to compare cost per student based on an individual DCPS school budget sheet (in this case, $11k per student for Oyster) to cost per student based on a charter's budget (in this case, $18k per student for LAMB) is not valid - it's comparing apples to oranges - the more accurate comparison is the $30k per student for DCPS to the $18k per student for LAMB.  I'd also point out that LAMB's spend per student is higher than most charters as per their budget sheet they got outside grant money - not all charters get that much in grant money.[/quote]

You are mixing direct and indirect costs. The real comparison would be expenses purely at the school level - you couldn't care less about Kaya Henderson $250k salary and the salaries of hundreds DCPS staff members who do nothing at the school level.[/quote]

Incorrect, as charters also have indirect costs at the administrative level.  Charter schools' indirect costs are included in the budget figures, whereas they are omitted from the DCPS budget figures.

On the other hand, if it's your intent to be saying that indirect costs shouldn't count because DCPS administrative staff serve no function at the DCPS school level and do absolutely nothing of value for DCPS schools then why do we have all that administrative staff, and couldn't we save millions by getting rid of them if they truly serve no purpose?

Regardless, it still points to how schools are able to run in a much more lean and efficient fashion in the charter model as opposed to having a huge amount of administrative bloat which nearly triples the cost in the DCPS model.[/quote]

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