It's morning in Wisconsin

[Tonitrus]

...aaand the best reason I am finding for the discrepancy is:  One side takes the entire school budget and divides by students, the other side reports how much is allocated, to each school, in the budget itself "per student".  The latter, most likely, ignoring non-student-directed administrative costs and such.

[The Brain]

In Sweden many voucher schools are for-profit.

[Hansmeister]

...aaand the best reason I am finding for the discrepancy is:  One side takes the entire school budget and divides by students, the other side reports how much is allocated, to each school, in the budget itself "per student".  The latter, most likely, ignoring non-student-directed administrative costs and such.

And "administrative costs" in public schools tend to be horrbily high due to bureaucratic bloat brought on by political patronage and the Unions.  About half of public school employment is for administrative staff, a ludicrous amount by any measure.  I remember my school in Germany only had two part-time nonteaching employees (secretary and groundskeeper).

[Hansmeister]

When I was living in DC the spending per pupil was something like 13K.

I'm having a hard time swallowing 5K/year in Baltimore.

Yeah, after doing more looking around, I am seeing wildly varying figures on per-pupil costs.  The article cites $5000...a website (that appears to support school choice) cites something like $13,000.

Education.com cites $14,200.

Note that these costs do not include the cost of employee pension benefits, which can add an additional $10,000 per pupil cost.  For example in D.C. per pupil spending including Union pensions is $24,600 per year. 

[HVC]

Children are expensive. We should start having less.

[Valmy]

Children are expensive. We should start having less.

We have been doing that for awhile now.  You can only imagine the public expense if we hadn't.

[Tonitrus]

  About half of public school employment is for administrative staff, a ludicrous amount by any measure. 

While I agree that admin employment is generally more than necessary, I think that may be an exaggerated contention.  I know that for my home, Bellevue School District, that I cited before, is only about 11% admin, and another 15% being maintenance, transport, and food service.  The rest is teaching staff.

But, then again, BSD competes very well nationally for results.  And, for the longest time, was the major center of the only congressional district in western Washington that voted Republican (though it has always been more of a Bush Sr./Bob Dole Republicanism). 

[HVC]

Children are expensive. We should start having less.

We have been doing that for awhile now.  You can only imagine the public expense if we hadn't.

Then we should force the older kids to teach the younger kids. Slaves are cheap.

[DGuller]

I remember my school in Germany only had two part-time nonteaching employees (secretary and groundskeeper).

And a cracking job that school did.

[Hansmeister]

And while we're in Union-bashing mode, from BusinessInsider:

This Bank Bashing Union Is Making Money With A High-Interest Credit Card
Peter Schweizer, Government Accountability Institute | Jun. 4, 2012, 9:18 AM | 1,090 | 5
     
With the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO spending tens of millions on political activism, including the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, union members might do well to see where the money is coming from.

Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans.

And contrary to Big Labor's claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members—only to the union bosses.

As the collection of union dues have dipped, union bosses are increasingly looking for ways to bend the revenue curve in their favor by profiting off loans and credit extended to their members. 

Consider, for example, the "SEIU New Rewards Visa Card" and the AFL-CIO "Union Plus" card.  With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively. 

This turns into huge money:  In FY2011, according to its LM-2 filing with the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO received approximately $28,163,266.00 from credit card revenue.

Given the labor movement's high-wattage rhetoric against the big banks, issuing credit cards to union members seems like an odd revenue source for Big Labor to pursue. 

After all, SEIU has blasted the banks for pushing "credit cards and other banking products with unfair rates or traps in the fine print."  Furthermore, they've enlisted their members to report banks offering "new products designed to push consumers further into debt."

If banks offer consumers products that ensnare them in deeper debt it's a problem.  But when unions do it, suddenly it's a legitimate revenue stream.

Former SEIU Executive Board Member Stephen Lerner has attacked banks for being built on "a business model on screwing customers, pushing dangerous products, and burying customers in more and more debt."  Still, that hasn't stopped the union credit card moneymaking gambit.   

Indeed, the AFL-CIO goes so far as to encourage their members to consider putting "a portion of your vehicle's down payment" on their union credit card.  Oddly, forget to mention that the union will bag a portion of the transaction.) 

In fact, the AFL-CIO was so determined to see their credit card program succeed that they hired an executive from Citicorp and American Express who managed corporate card marketing for those firms to head up the effort.

Both the AFL-CIO and SEIU try to give their members the impression that their cards are superior to others on the market, but they're not.  The SEIU, for example, offers an introductory rate of 12.24% APR to 22.24%, which is consistent with the industry standards the union have labeled "predatory."  The SEIU card boasts that it doesn't charge a late fee.  But union members should read the fine print; if they miss a payment, their rate skyrockets to 27.99%.

Nerdwallet, which Money magazine calls the "Best Credit Card Site" on the web, compares the value of more than 1,000 credit cards.  They thrashed the Union Plus card's slick advertising and complex fine print. 

Worse, Nerdwallet points out that many of the card's so-called benefits are already available by virtue of union membership.  "We are appalled at the popularity of the Union Plus Credit Card," says Nerdwallet.  "Avoid the Union Plus Credit Card."

Along with credit cards, the AFL-CIO and SEIU hawk "Union Plus" mortgages to their members.   The AFL-CIO's Richard Trumpka says his union has held an estimated 200 protests against Chase and other lenders, and the SEIU's website declares:  "Chase hurts everybody.  They're making a profit by lending taxpayers their own money."

But if you need a mortgage and use the Union Plus mortgage program, the unions direct you to Chase. "Financing a home can be a complicated business, so why not leave it to the experts?" states a local SEIU website.  The Union Plus program is nothing special; it offers rates and fees comparable to other programs offered by Chase.  The only difference is the fee given to the Union when a member signs up.  Thus far, the Union Plus mortgage program has directed more than 80,000 mortgages to Chase.

Beyond the irony and hypocrisy of labor unions being transformed into financial services providers, this new reality creates a massive conflict of interest for union bosses.

By fostering the illusion that union-backed financial products are somehow better and less "predatory" than non-union products, Big Labor is making big bucks.  But when union bosses become the middleman, their interests become boosting revenues from banks and credit card companies, not brokering a better deal for union members.

The SEIU credit card grew out of the deep financial crisis the union found itself in 2009.  With membership falling and tens of millions in debts as a result of its spending on the presidential election, SEIU needed a way to raise some fast cash.  And the unions are increasingly working for the financial institutions and not for their members. 

For example, the SEIU pushes its credit cards through SEIU Services and Marketing Inc., a taxable corporation.  Its purpose: to provide "technical assistance and support services to financial institutions and financial services firms, aiding those institutions and firms with the promotion and marketing of their products beneficial to our members."

All this means that AFL-CIO and SEIU members have themselves become enormous profit centers for the union bosses who control them.   When the banks do it, it's called Wall Street greed at its worst.  When the Big Labor does it, it's simply working the union way.

[Hansmeister]

  About half of public school employment is for administrative staff, a ludicrous amount by any measure. 

While I agree that admin employment is generally more than necessary, I think that may be an exaggerated contention.  I know that for my home, Bellevue School District, that I cited before, is only about 11% admin, and another 15% being maintenance, transport, and food service.  The rest is teaching staff.

But, then again, BSD competes very well nationally for results.  And, for the longest time, was the major center of the only congressional district in western Washington that voted Republican (though it has always been more of a Bush Sr./Bob Dole Republicanism). 

It is usually the more urban a school district, the more bloated the staff (and remember, you have to count the school district employees as well, not just the ones actually employed at the schools itself, since they are part of the overhead.)

[Hansmeister]

I remember my school in Germany only had two part-time nonteaching employees (secretary and groundskeeper).

And a cracking job that school did.

I scored in the 97% in English and 93% in math percentile on the SAT, as a nonnative English speaker with only 10 years of primary education (and 10 years after having left school).  So I put my German education against any US public school any day.  Of course I went to school in Bavaria which has by far the best schools in Germany (only Baden-Wuerttenberg was ever able to compete with them, where I went to school until 4th grade).

[DGuller]

I remember my school in Germany only had two part-time nonteaching employees (secretary and groundskeeper).

And a cracking job that school did.

I scored in the 97% in English and 93% in math percentile on the SAT, as a nonnative English speaker with only 10 years of primary education (and 10 years after having left school).  So I put my German education against any US public school any day.  Of course I went to school in Bavaria which has by far the best schools in Germany (only Baden-Wuerttenberg was ever able to compete with them, where I went to school until 4th grade).

Those are actually exactly my percentiles as well, except for math and English reversed.    I'm a non-native speaker as well, and I did go to US public schools.

[11B4V]

I remember my school in Germany only had two part-time nonteaching employees (secretary and groundskeeper).

And a cracking job that school did.

  So I put my German education against any US public school any day.  Of course I went to school in Bavaria which has by far the best schools in Germany (only Baden-Wuerttenberg was ever able to compete with them, where I went to school until 4th grade).

I would put US public schools way ahead of your faggoty Euro schools any day in a brawl, knife, or gun fight. 

[CountDeMoney]

In Sweden private schools can either take vouchers (which are the same amount that the public schools get) or charge tuition (which can be any amount). They cannot do both.

Well, that's just super;  I'm sure the Burroughs School will be more than willing to accept vouchers in the same amount as the $4,902 the St Louis public school system receives per student. 

Elaborate.

Private schools here will never accept vouchers equal to what the public schools get, because the tuition they charge is always substantially higher.  Your universal all-schools-get-the-same-amount-in-Sweden voucher model would never be accepted here.

Oh look, it's retard-boy again.  Inner-city public school spending per pupil is substatially higher than all but the most elite private schools, my daughter's private school spends about half of what the public schools spend.

In the few existing voucher programs the vouchers are substantially lower than what public schools get per students because Union controlled Democrats want to make sure black kids are forever trapped in school systems that leave them without basic skills to survive on their own so that they stay the good little slaves that the Democrats want them to be.  The Democrats are still all about controlling black people, nothing has changed on that front.

Yada, yada, yada.  Don't you have a PowerPoint to write?  Teach Taliban sympathizing Afghani cops how to use pepper spray or something?