The Tribune’s editorial on public education funding (“Coming up short,” Jan. 31) states that “Illinois should spend at least $6,405 a year per child in the classroom to provide an adequate education” to each child who has no special disadvantages. The claim is based solely on a study of efficient public school districts.
This ignores the elephant in the room: namely, that private schools outperform most public schools while spending only about a third of that amount. The difference is in the public schools’ bloated bureaucracies and union-inflated salaries. Those factors are clearly more fiscally significant than the often-ballyhooed ability of private schools to reject disruptive students. What taxpayers should demand is school choice in the form of vouchers, so that the public schools can be forced to perform to the private schools’ higher standards.
