Education Law

Private school spending myth busted

A major argument often heard by BoardBuzz from proponents of private school vouchers is that it’s less costly to educate a student in private school than in public school.  The bad news is they can no longer cite that as a reason for supporting vouchers.  This article in the Washington Post talks about a new federal study that found non-religious private schools actually spent almost twice as much per pupil as their public school counterparts.  In addition, Catholic schools (nonparochial) tended to spend about the same as public schools.

Bruce Baker,  author of the study by the National Center for Education Statistics, said in the article:

“There are a lot of urban legends that drive the policy discussions,” he added that ”private schools tend to be costlier than the commonly accepted figures in policy debates, especially conversations about school vouchers.”

The NCES study dispelled just one of the many myths surrounding the perceived effectiveness of private school vouchers.  For more information on why vouchers are bad public policy, see NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center .

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on August 31, 2009 (boomark / email).