Some Students Are More Expensive to Educate — Private Schools Know This

Some students are just more expensive to educate than other students, and that's what makes vouchers really fall apart.

If you look at the claims that voucher proponents make that private schools can be more efficient, they can do a better job with the same or less money, That's not really true because they're not educating the same students.

Public schools get a certain amount of money per student, but they have to educate every single student.

Private schools might get that amount of money.

They might get slightly less money, but they don't have to educate every student.

They can be picky.

They can be choosy.

They can say, we're only going to pick the students who are already doing well, who don't have any kind of special needs, who have a lot of parent support, who don't need transportation.

They can be picky in a million ways.

So the idea that these are equivalent populations that should cost the same and you know, private schools are therefore better or something like this just doesn't make any sense at all.

Like somebody told me the other day that Boston Public Schools gets about $30,000 a year per kid, which is a lot of money nationally.

Don't you think a private school could educate a student for a lot less than $30,000?

Well, we have to break that down a little bit because not all students are the average, you know, that's just an average.

Not all students cost exactly the same amount of money, even if the average within a district is a given number.

So what's gonna happen if, say, those Boston Public Schools students get vouchers and get to go to private schools?

Well, the private schools are only going to admit the easy students.

They are going to admit students that they can educate for less than $30,000 a piece, and then, you know, that money can go to other stuff.

And they're going to exclude the students who cost maybe 50 or 60 or $100,000 a year each to educate and which students are those going to be?

Are those going to be students who are taking a lot of AP classes because AP is expensive?

No, those are going to be students who have higher academic needs, who have maybe medical needs, who may be maybe need a one on one aid to navigate the classroom.

Those are the most expensive students that the private school is never going to accept.

And what is going to happen to those averages if this happens in large numbers, right?

If the private schools are taking the money for those easy to educate students and leaving behind harder to educate students, is the public school district going to get more money for those students?

No, they're gonna get the same amount of money as before, but the average cost of educating their remaining students is going to shoot through the roof.

So I really have a hard time seeing private school vouchers as anything other than a subsidy for the rich.

And as I said in my last video, of course they're going to raise tuition.

Like, they would be foolish not to raise tuition because it's free money.

It is literally free money for them, and their parents are already paying some amount that they can presumably continue to pay.

So, you know, I just think we've got to think through the likely consequences.

Like, if everybody behaves rationally, here's the principle to operate on.

If everybody behaves rationally, what do you expect to happen?

Like, don't expect everybody to behave altruistically.

Like, don't expect the private schools to not raise tuition because that would be the altruistic thing to do.

Don't expect them to accept students with disabilities if they don't have to just because that would be the right thing to do.

They're going to behave rationally.

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