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How Sending Your Child to Private School Can Save You $53,000
8/18/14 | Money
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“Public” Schools in Name Only
2/18/2010 | Education Next blog
A recent report by Trulia finds that houses in school districts where rich families send their children to public school can cost more than twice the national average per square foot. Jacob Davidson crunches the numbers for Money magazine and finds that for some families in some places, it would be cheaper to live in a less expensive neighborhood and send their child to private school (albeit not a top prep school) than it would be to buy or rent a home in a wealthy school district with outstanding public schools.
Mike Petrilli has written for Education Next about the phenomenon of “private public schools” — public schools that serve virtually no poor children because only well-off families can afford to live within the school boundaries. Petrilli writes
These schools are open secrets in the education policy community. They are where lots of the children of the nation’s elite get educated (if they aren’t attending ritzy private schools). And taxpayers are spending upwards of $20 billion a year supporting them. Yet there’s none of the outcry that surfaces when someone proposes vouchers so poor children can attend private schools at public expense. How come? And if the civil rights community is upset that charter schools serve “too many” poor and minority kids, why aren’t they upset that these “public” schools serve too many white and middle class children?
-Education Next
