$75 Million Building, $40,000 a Year Tuition; Where Your Public School Dollars May Soon be Going

An Option for both Rich and Poor

Private schools have always been present in the American educational system.  Some such as Catholic schools in major urban areas with a large Catholic population, like Buffalo, educate a lot of children.  Others are small, very expensive and educate the children of America’s elite.

In New York City there is the start of a new private school, a for-profit institution called Avenues: The World School and it looks, at least on paper to be pretty good education.

         The founders say students at Avenues will learn bilingually, immersed in classrooms where half of the instruction will be in Spanish or Mandarin, the other half in English, from nursery school through fourth grade. The school will be part of a network of 20 campuses around the world with roughly the same curriculum. If Mom and Dad move to London, little Mateo doesn’t have to find a new school, or maybe even miss any class. When Sophia is in middle school, she can spend her summers in Shanghai, and when she’s in high school, she can globe-trot by semester. Avenues will foster “mastery,” finding students’ passions early and building on them

From left, Alan Greenberg, Benno Schmidt and Chris Whittle are betting on their investment in Avenues, a new private school scheduled to open in 2012. Above right, a rendering of the school, and below, the school's exterio

So what about the economics of such a place?  Well the initial capital expenditure is $75 million, and the annual tuition, $40,000.  Does this mean that only the very wealthy will have access to this type of education?  The Dismal Political Economist thinks that will not be the situation, that Conservatives who promote school vouchers will place such an educational opportunity as Exhibit A in their goal to eliminate public schooling and replace it with a voucher program. 

See, suppose every parent gets a $10,000 voucher to pay for their child’s education in a public or private school.  Wealthy parents get a $10,000 discount off the $40,000 tuition, and poor parents have to come up with only $30,000 a year to send their child to the school.  So quality education becomes more affordable, and poor parents have the same opportunity as wealthy ones.   And the school’s investors, (this is a for-profit enterprise remember) they get a nice return paid for in part by public money. 

Just one possible view of the future, the country is not there yet, but the trip to that future may be starting. 

Just thought you ought to know.