Money and the Market for High Quality Schools
This post is a revised version of my previous post – If money doesn’t matter…
Here is a draft set of slides to accompany this post: Resource Heterogeneity across Sectors
The theme du jour is that reform (very narrowly defined reform), not money will fix our schools. We’re already spending a lot, the pundits say. Too much in fact, for what we’re getting. We need more charter schools – which obviously do more with less – we need to treat teachers like workers in the private sector (?) by publicly ranking them based on their students’ test scores – and in general, we need to adopt “market” oriented strategies. But…
If money doesn’t matter then why do private independent schools (market driven schools?) spend, on average, so much more per child than nearby public schools?
First off, I am a supporter of private independent schools and former teacher in a private independent school in New York City – An exceptional school where tuition is now about $35,000 per child (where tuition covers only a portion of expense) in a city where the public system is being chastised by politicians and the popular media for