School Size and Spending per Pupil in the Nation's Capitol

D.C. Schools budget includes wide range in per-student spending

Washington Post, April 23,2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-schools-budget-includes-wide-range-in-per-student-spending/2015/04/23/4e1027f0-e919-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html?wprss=rss_Copy%20of%20local-alexandria-social&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Key Points:

• D.C. schools vary in per pupil spending from $16,467 to $8,312
• A parent group has made a website to track spending data by school in order to hold administration officials accountable
• The trends largely reflect the economy of scale that makes larger schools less expensive/student
• This data also allows correlation between funding and program offerings

Intended Audience:

• Practitioner Educators, Parents, twitter followers, readership

Relevance:

• The role that funding plays in education, and specifically in which types of schools we choose to teach in is a relevant consideration.  I am grateful for the parent’s gathering of data to root-out inappropriate funding allocation,
• I am curious to do more research on the policy implications of larger schools.  Could larger, more efficient schools free up money spent on maintenance or overlapping responsibilities be better spent to provide smaller classes, broader enrichment opportunities?