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New Jersey per-pupil cost is $17,800

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Eastern United States Map
Eastern United States Map

From the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Michele Bachmann)

Excerpt:

The Christie administration has recalculated the amount it says New Jersey public school districts spend per pupil, increasing the state average rate by several thousand dollars to more than $17,800.

The figure, from the 2009-10 school year, has been adjusted to include costs such as transportation, federal funding, debt payments and legal judgments that can vary greatly from district to district. In the 2008-09 school year, using the previous calculation, the state average was $13,200 per student.

The Christie administration says the new figure is more transparent and complete.

[…]Gov. Chris Christie has frequently said that Newark schools spend nearly $25,000 per student, despite what he calls failing results. The new spending guide shows Newark’s spending at nearly $23,000 per student, up from about $17,600 under previous estimates.

Compare that with the average tuition with higher-performing private or parochial schools.

Excerpt:

AVERAGE PRIVATE SCHOOL TUITION: $8,549

Elementary: $6,733
Secondary: $10,549
Combined: $10,045
(Digest 2009, Chapter 2, Table 59)

AVERAGE CATHOLIC SCHOOL TUITION: $6,018

Elementary: $4,944
Secondary: $7,826
Combined: $9,066
(Digest 2009, Chapter 2, Table 59)

I think we need to put in a national voucher system, or, failing that, we should abolish the federal Department of Education completely and leave education to the states and municipalities.

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Can government be as greedy as corporations are supposed to be?

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Very popular editorial from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Nowhere has liberalism gone further than in San Francisco. And few, if any, other cities can boast such a well-heeled work force. Is this what “spreading the wealth” is all about?

We have seen the future and it works — for certain people. Take San Francisco municipal workers. The San Francisco Chronicle recently detailed just how overpaid the city’s employees are. Their average yearly salary is $93,000 before benefits. A third of them made more than $100,000 in 2009. A newly retired deputy police chief (not even the city’s top cop) made $516,118.

[…]Also in 2009, 28 city employees made more than the mayor, Gavin Newsom, who pulled down a respectable $250,903. Firefighters in San Francisco have a base salary of $102,648, while even lowly payroll clerks start at $54,314.

[…]Unions, particularly public-sector unions, leverage their money and membership to stock legislatures, city councils and county boards with friendly faces. Those faces, in turn, lock governments into contracts (particularly where pensions are concerned) that are extremely difficult to break.

The problem with this is that the private sector is the only part of the economy that actually has to please customers in order to get paid. Government workers don’t have to provide good service in order to get paid. They don’t compete with anyone, and individual workers have no incentive to work harder – their raises are based on union bargaining, not on pleasing customers. So then why are government workers making more money than the productive private sector workers when San Francisco has a $483 million budget deficit? Why isn’t this greed?