Book Learnin'

[xoxoxoBruce]

Nevada enacts school choice.

Nevada governor Brian Sandoval signed into law the nation’s first universal school-choice program. That in and of itself is groundbreaking: The state has created an option open to every single public-school student. Even better, this option improves upon the traditional voucher model, coming in the form of an education savings account (ESA) that parents control and can use to fully customize their children’s education.
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As of next year, parents in Nevada can have 90 percent (100 percent for children with special needs and children from low-income families) of the funds that would have been spent on their child in their public school deposited into a restricted-use spending account. That amounts to between $5,100 and $5,700 annually, according to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Those funds are deposited quarterly onto a debit card, which parents can use to pay for a variety of education-related services and products — things such as private-school tuition, online learning, special-education services and therapies, books, tutors, and dual-enrollment college courses. It’s an à la carte education, and the menu of options will be as hearty as the supply-side response — which, as it is whenever markets replace monopolies, is likely to be robust.

How do they determine what would have been spent? If a bunch of kids stop going to public school, won't the cost of running those schools increase?

[Clodfobble]

"What would have been spent" is already a very well-known number, because it's how the funding is doled out in the first place, by the student. And not just by the annual enrollment at a particular school, but by the daily attendance. If your kid is out sick, they don't get paid for the day, that is literally about $20 out of the school's pocket for every day they miss.

Costs do go down if students leave, because they don't have to hire as many teachers or own/maintain as many buildings, but it's not linear. From a principal's point of view, for example, 25 3rd-graders is better than 24, because you get paid for one extra kid but the building doesn't realistically have to be any bigger. But when that 26th 3rd-grader enrolls, you are fucked, because the state says no more than 25 kids in a classroom, so now you have to hire a second teacher and they're each only bringing in money from 13 kids each. So they constantly redistrict the neighborhoods, and reassign teachers to different grades, and generally do anything they can to keep the enrollment just barely under whatever arbitrary limit will knock them up to the next level.

[xoxoxoBruce]

OK, it's a well known number from past experience under the current system. But inflation and a whole host of variables moves that number upward (I presume rarely downward). Now you've got a whole new system, redistricting won't solve the problem unless you're in an urban/suburban area with tons of kids to manipulate. In Bumfuck, NV, where there about 150 kids in the county, that won't work.