Help Me Figure This Out…
Tags: Cost per Pupil, Cost Per Student, education, Loudoun, Private vs. Public, Vouchers
By: eporter
Ok, so Loudoun County has advertised that it spends $12,780 per student in 2009 (this is approx. $7k less than the amount spent in Arlington or Alexandria).
Private schools are providing an education at approx $8k per student, as is the case at Dominion Academy in Leesburg.
Shouldn’t we demand more from our local government? They are spending 50% more per student than their private counterpart. Perhaps government should get out of the education business?
What’s even more depressing is the reported $13k spent per student for the Loudoun Head Start program that is only half a day. Compare that with approx. $7k at Dominion.
While not sure how accurate it is, Wikipedia reports that Loudoun County serves 50,000 students from K -12th grade. If Loudoun County issued vouchers to attend any school and we assume that the chosen schools had same/similar tuition as Dominion, that would be a savings of approx $4500 per student. If only 20% (10,000 students) chose to participate in the voucher program, that would save the county…hmmm…10,000 x $4,500 = $45,000,000. Not too shabby.


