How parents pay for private school|NAIS

Recently I had some interesting conversations at Thom's Board about Public/Private schools starting with this post. I started with this comment:

I had an employee working for me as a single mother of two as a sales person in a retail store and she sent her two children to a private school in Inglewood, CA. She sent her daughter to Saint Mary's Academy and the Tuition and Fees come to $5,600 per year. LAUSD spends about $17,000 per child per year. And of course even with out reimbursement of any kind she felt her child would get a better education at Saint Mary's Academy than that hell hole called Inglewood High.

And a little information on another school (Calvin Christian) and their fees:

The approximate cost of operation per student for 2007-08 is $4,300 for kindergarten, $6,100 for grades 1-8, and $6,500 for high school. These amounts are in the highlighted row in the guide.

I also posted another link that points out K-12 Public Schools and Students (2002-2003) was Current per-pupil expenditure: $8,109. So maybe school choice can reduce overall costs through competition?

In our talk someone brings up first Phillips Academy, better known as Andover with these rates:

Tuition for 2007-2008 is $37,200 for boarding students and $29,000 for day students. Please note that the average cost to educate a student at Andover will be approximately $62,600 for the coming year.

Well at least this gives us a view of where the rich will send their kids and probably the upper limit of what cost structures are. It does paint a picture on endowments or subsidized education even for private schools.

And from How parents pay for private school:

"There's just (so) much that I don't do because I made this choice," says Ann Botticelli, who budgets around the $1,400 monthly payments for her son's high school tuition.

Unfortunately, they don't say whether Ann is on a monthly payment or 9 monthly payments. But she did say right below that this:

It's worth it, she says. Her son, who is making the most of the opportunity, is "a very engaged and appreciative student," she says.

So thousands of dollars for her sons education is better than a free education from the public school. How does something free get such a bad rap unless it really is bad?

The average-median tuition (which is an average of the median tuition costs of each grade) for a year at independent schools that are not affiliated with a religion is $17,145 for day students and $33,533 for boarding school students, according to 2005-2006 data from the National Association of Independent Schools.

OK, this sounds a little high for what we have been looking at above. So let us look into the numbers from NAIS Facts at a Glance (National Association of Independent Schools):
2005-2006 NAIS Members
Average Median Tuition (All Grades) Day $ 15,012
Average Total Expense per student: Day $ 16,434
Average Total Income per student: Day $ 17,341
or another way to calculate:
Total Expenses per student $ 17,233
Total Income per student $ 18,185
Lastly Salary Expenses:
Teacher Salary Expenses per student $ 5,447
All Salary Expenses per student $ 9 ,328
(Note all numbers unless specified are for just day schools.) I presented these numbers to get an idea of what member schools averages are. While these are close to the numbers we are looking for, they are not the exact numbers that are quoted in the article.
Average Median Tuition Grades9&12 Day $16,639 $21,426 $17,145
Average Median Tuition Grades9&12 Boarding $32,040 $33,975 $33,533
The rows are from left to right are Day School, Boarding School and the average of the two. Notice that our numbers from the article (i.e. $17,145 and $33,533) are referring to the High School years and not total average across all grades.
The true numbers that they are referring to are:
Average Median Tuition (All Grades) Day $15,012 $19,479 $15,195
Average Median Tuition (All Grades) Boarding $30,988 $33,606 $32,757
So this is an overstatement of $1950 and almost 13%. I think we can also note at this time that the data is for Religious and Non-Religious schools. I see nothing in their statistics that indicate that the data is divided. Maybe the premium sections do, but we have the exact numbers quoted in the article. They have some restrictions that may discourage Religious Schools from being members but they do have a wide variety of denominations. One requirement is an independent school board. Since I was looking around I thought I would also look at the 2006-2007 numbers....
2006-2007 NAIS Members
Average Median Tuition Grades1&3 Day $14,050
Average Median Tuition Grades6&8 Day $15,684
Average Median Tuition Grades9&12 Day $17,555
Average Median Tuition (All Grades) Day $15,763

Average Total Expense per student: Day $17,225
Total Expenses per student $17,960
Total Income per student $18,978
About what we expected.
But that was for NAIS members whether affiliated with a Religious Organization or not! Now for a sample of NON-NAIS Members:
Average Median Tuition Grades1&3 Day $8,915
Average Median Tuition Grades6&8 Day $9,864
Average Median Tuition Grades9&12 Day $10,008
Average Median Tuition (All Grades) Day $9,596

Average Total Expense per student: Day $11,101
Average Total Income per student: Day $11,564

Teacher Salary Expenses per student $4,442
All Salary Expenses per student $7,219

Total Expenses per student $12,449
Total Income per student $13,120
If you were noticing through the numbers total income (which includes donations and grants) is greater than expenses on every category but only a small percentage as compared to profit motivated businesses. So we can conclude that most are based on a non-profit aspect. Also it should be noted that the difference between Tuition and Expenses per child is by a percentage of around 20-30% and not by a factor of two or more.

We can see that Non-Members costs are significantly lower than Members costs. You can say there is a bias toward the premium schools are members. So while I spent some time on this, I conclude this data is completely biased for what was reported and even the Non-members could be a very biased sample.

The use of average-median also strange since is was biased toward the low side more likely due to some very expensive schools that drove up the averages as calculated.



Links:
How parents pay for private school

Backup:
How parents pay for private school

Facts at a Glance

Phillips Academy, better known as Andover