A Hardworking Student, my Katie

My youngest daughter, Katie Anderson, coasted along in the public schools of Montgomery County, Maryland doing well in her studies when she had a good teacher and doing substantially worse when she had a bad teacher. When she was in about the 8th grade, she decided to become a more serious-minded student. In the 9th grade she took some Honors courses, including a newly offered Honors physics course. She continued taking honors and AP courses until she graduated from high school. Her school barely recognized her existence, however. When she graduated, she had taken 7 AP exams and had all 4's and 5's in the tests. She entered the Honors Program at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in biotechnology, classified as a sophomore due to her credits from her AP course work. She was awarded a RIT Presidential Scholarship and the Nancy and Bruce B. Bates Nathaniel Rochester Society Science Scholarship.

At RIT she worked extremely hard. In her 2nd year, she began the first of a series of research projects with professors in the biotechnology sciences. She has taken very large numbers of credits each quarter, until this year when she cut back to more normal course loads. She will graduate with many, many extra credits. Katie has worked as a teaching assistant for several courses and worked as a note-taker for RIT's Access Services and Academic Accommodations. She also serves as the secretary of the Honors Council.

She also organized a women's Lacrosse league at RIT as co-founder, which she has continued to run as president into her 4th year. She also became active in the Habitat Club at RIT and played a major role in organizing its events in her 3rd year. Now, in her fourth year, she is the President of the Habitat Club. RIT has a Sustainability Program which involves a number of the engineering departments. Early this year, the president of RIT asked Katie to come and see him and they talked about ways in which new sustainable building methods could be easily implemented in the homes that the Habitat Club was involved in building. Katie is very enthusiastic about this program and is working with the engineering departments to transfer ideas into future Habitat building projects.

Early this academic year, she was told she had won the Brody Scholarship and Award, which was offered for the first time ever to one Junior and one Senior. Then Katie was chosen for the Outstanding Scholar Award. Anna and I are driving up to RIT on 1 April to attend her reception, award ceremony, and a dinner for this award. More recently, she won the Baldwin Award, which is accompanied by a $3,000 payment upon graduation. The award ceremony for that is on 15 April, so Anna and I will be going back up to RIT for that ceremony. As of this time, Kathryn Anna Anderson has a 4.00 GPA! What an amazing young lady.

Katie will graduate with a combined B.S. degree in two majors: biotechnology and biomedical sciences and with a minor in psychology. She plans to do medical research for one year and then go on to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. She intends to pursue a research career in immunology.

The Cost of Public Schools

Today I mean the cost in tax dollars to support public schools, not the cost in ethical relativism, ignorance, group think, and propaganda devoured. Andrew Coulson of The Cato Institute did some looking into the numbers for the Washington, D.C. public school system. Through the last couple of years I have seen the cost per student given commonly in the range of $9,000 to $12,000 something. He states that the most commonly cited figure is $8,322 per student now. Why do these numbers vary so much? Well, it turns out that it is because it all depends on how much the school system decides to hide from the public.

Coulson found that for K through 12 in 2007-2008, the local operating budget is $831 million, the capital budget is $218 million, federal funding is $85.5 million, and the D.C. Council kicks in an additional $81 million. There are 49,422 students, some of whom, on a given day, actually come to school. Divide this number into the sum of the annual funding and the cost per student is found to be about $24,600, which is rather a bit more than $8,322.

I have heard many discussions about how it is difficult for private schools to take on the education of a child for about $8,322 per year, so they could not take over the public school burden of education. But.......the story is clearly very different when you realize that the public schooling cost for a virtual non-education is on par cost-wise with the very elite private school, Sidwell Friends, that Chelsea Clinton attended. Would any sane person actually send their child to the dangerous and dilapidated D.C. public schools rather than an elite private school? No!

It clearly makes much more sense just to provide parents with a scholarship voucher to use on the school of their choice. Sure, the amount on the voucher may be less than $24,600 per year per student, allowing one to save considerable money for the poor beleaguered taxpayers. Florida's McKay Scholarship program provides money for special-needs children and the average scholarship for 2006-2007 was only $7,206. Sure, the cost of living is lower in Florida, but special-needs education is more expensive to deliver than general education. It is clear that private schools are now available to do a better educating job even at a cost of $12,000 to $15,000 per year per student in even the D.C. area. Many new schools would soon arise to meet the need if parents were given such scholarships.

The quality of the education in D.C. schools is indecently poor. This school system is awash in bureaucracy, inefficiency, and out-right corruption. Parents should be allowed to put it out of business or force it to meet the competition. The fantasy that this public education is free and that it even is education, must be challenged. The forces enforcing its monopoly on the education of our young are truly evil. Those forces include egalitarian socialists and the teacher's unions.

Neither is interested in the individual student learning to think for himself.