According to WikiAnswers, the national average cost for public school students is “$9866 per year.” I hate answers that aren’t referenced, so I kept looking for the answer to the question:

What is the national average cost per student in public school?

From a July 2004 article,

Well Education Weak noted recently that an estimated $501.3 billion in taxpayer money is spent for education in the United States.

Crunching the numbers, we found that’s an average of over $10,000 per K-12 student, and that it takes four taxpayers to raise this amount.

So now we are up to around $10,000 per kid. Any other stats?

In Virginia, Prince William County “has a projected annual cost per pupil of $10,496, compared with $12,917 in Fairfax, $12,461 in Loudoun, $17,500 in Arlington and $17,968 in Alexandria.”

Pocket change. According to the Washington Post:

We’re often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child – on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.

For a little perspective, The Center for Education Reform puts the cost per student at private schools nationally at $4,689, $3,236 for Catholic Schools. That is a national average. It might be more or less where you are, but I would put money it isn’t more than what DC is spending.

How did they come to that number? Addition and division:

To calculate total spending, we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education. For the current school year, the local operating budget is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund. The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5 million in federal funding. And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81 million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08 year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child.

Those must be some outstanding students learning in state of the art learning environments, right? Not so much. In fact, when I started researching the state of DC’s schools, the first resource I found was a seven part Washington Post investigative series titled “Fixing D.C.’s Schools.”

Seven part, fifteen stories. That has to be one seriously malfunctioning school system. But the funding is higher than most school systems in the country.

This is the same mechanism that wants control of your health care. Is there any doubt where the quality of care will be in ten years if they get it?

And just so you know how much does homeschooling costs, per student, per year?

As much as you make it cost. And I don’t have to steal anyone else’s property to fund it.

Hat Tip: Why Homeschool