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[quote=Anonymous]This issue can not be fully understood by just focusing on one year's rationale for increase.  Over the last 15 years, the price-tag of these schools has increased at a considerably faster rate than:

1. Teacher's salaries
2. Healthcare costs (the current fashionable excuse)
3. Inflation
4. Area median income growth

Unlike other products and services that we buy, all of which have a technology, physical plant and labor cost component to them, private schools do not benefit from productivity gains from a reduced labor component (the student-teacher ratio is sacred) and they have mostly chosen to increase their physical plant cost in a facilities arms race.  They hold out technology as the savior; that blended learning will be the key in the future to controlling cost.  But, there is very little evidence of this happening now as schools are very slow to depart from the traditional classroom model.

While there is perceived safety in the short run by sticking with the rest of the herd, the winners in the long run will adapt and adopt new ways of doing business.

1.  Alternative classrooms that take advantage of public resources like museums and parks
2.  Strategies for sharing physical resources with other schools (e.g. shared athletic facilities and teams - do Maret and Sidwell really need separate mediocre football teams?)
3.  Blended teaching environments that leverage teachers' time, thereby reducing the central cost component of providing the service 
4.  Use of alternative lower-cost  teachers to supplement and reinforce what is taught by the primary in the classroom (retired professionals, for example)

I am not an expert and my examples might be ridiculous to those with experience in the field.  I offer them only to suggest that something has to change.[/quote]

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