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Charter schools cost $153 million for 427 students, or $358k per student (piefed.social)

submitted 6 days ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/politics@lemmy.nz

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427 students

$153 million

To be fair, that's $153m over 4 years and the student numbers will probably increase. Let's pretend there were 1000 students, so that's 153,000,000 / 4 / 1000 = $38k per student per year.

For the rest of the school system, the govt spends ~$10k per student per year, see page 10, point 1.2. So Charter schools still cost nearly 4x as much and they don't even work.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So Charter schools still cost nearly 4x as much and they don’t even work.

Charter schools are different from the boot camps, right? My understanding is a charter school is a public school that is run by a company. They don't have to follow the curriculum (I think?) so you'll see schools focused around problem students, under achievers, or neurodiverse students.

Personally I don't like them and think we should support these students directly rather than via some company, but I think it's wrong to equate them to the boot camps.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

All boot camps are charter schools but not all charter schools are boot camps.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think we shouldn't rule out some charter schools helping just because boot camps don't. Having dedicated support for certain students may well be beneficial. The real question is why do we pay companies loads of money to do this instead of providing that money to the existing schools.

[–] Triton420@mander.xyz 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not sure where you’re at but in general charter schools pick and choose only the students they want and let the public schools deal with the more difficult

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 3 points 6 days ago

In New Zealand, I know some apps don't show the community display name but this is the NZ Politics community.

This is the government's description of charter schools, specifically calling them public schools: https://www.charterschools.govt.nz/what-is-a-charter-school/

As mentioned above, some charter schools are boot camps intended to deal with the more difficult students (but with evidence they don't work). There are also specialist schools such as the new ones for autistic/neurodivergent students (jury still out on if they will help).