School Costs Reported Near $5,000 a Pupil
Public schooling is expected to cost $4,810 per student this year, a figure that has risen by more than $2,000 since 1980, the Education Department reported Tuesday.
“The financial investment we are making in our children’s education is immense. . . . We must produce better results for our investment, for our young people, and for the future of our nation,” Education Secretary William J. Bennett said in releasing his department’s back-to-school report.
Spending on education is running well ahead of the overall rate of inflation in the 1980s, the statistics show.
The $2,762 per student spent in the 1980-81 school year, with adjustment to the consumer price index, would have risen to $3,462, but the report said the cost this year will exceed that amount by about 39%.
Increased state and local spending on efforts to improve schools is one major reason education costs are rising faster than others, education statistician Vance Grant said.
During the same period, between the 1980-81 school year and 1988-89, the average teacher’s salary rose to $29,573, from $17,644.
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