As a parent of a public school kid, I am deeply frustrated by the overburdened mission scope of the school system. Schools must be a social welfare program, a babysitting service, and an educational system -- my impression from my own kids' journey through the system is that the priorities go in that order.

When the essay talked about "high cost" students, my first thought was special ed. In my district, the 2021-22 budget allocates about $71M and 513 FTEs to serve 10,475 special ed students. Or, about $6778/yr and 2 hours per week per student. I've aggregated that across several categories -- in the most expensive of those, the per-student cost is $21,351/yr and 7.9 hours/week., which is over triple the average cost of an average student. This may sound shocking, but these kids have special needs, and those needs require resources to be met.

Now let's look at a "low cost" special need: kids whose academic performance is very strong. In my district, the principal way that these kids are served are through the "Talented and Gifted" program (TAG). This program is nearly unfunded. The district has an annual budget of roughly $1b/yr., and serves nearly 40,000 students across over 50 schools. About 6,333 of those students are in TAG. The program has a total budget of roughly $387k/yr., or about $61/student/yr. It has 0.8 FTEs allocated -- that is to say, the budget allocates 32 hours a week of labor to serve the entire district's TAG K-12 needs, or about 18 seconds per week per TAG student.

"TAG" kids are successful but they still have needs. They need extra attention from teachers and mentors. They need the opportunity to work on challenging coursework, focused on their areas of talent and interest. They need to be able to work with peers who can keep a similar pace. All of that costs a lot more than $61/yr. and needs more than 18 seconds/week of someone's time, but that's presently what they get. And I think that's because these kids look like they're doing great -- they get good grades, they're less likely to be on drugs or involved in gangs, and their attendance is usually solid. But that viewpoint only considers these kids in terms of the needs of the school and society at large, rather than their own need to be stimulated and cultivated and to have so much of their childhood spent wisely. Because nothing immediately blows up when those needs are unmet, nothing is spent to meet them, and the money goes towards the squeaky wheels.

So when the linked essay talks about "low cost" students, I think it fails to address that they actually have high cost needs that are going unpaid. As a result, their parents have to shoulder the extra cost themselves by either paying out of pocket for a private school, or taking the time (and career sacrifice) to home school. That's exactly the kind of burden social programs like public education are supposed to avoid! Many families simply can't afford this or are unable to do this due to other barriers, and so their kids' needs simply go unserved.

To be clear, there are many possible solutions here, of which the status quo and vouchers are just two. I don't think they're even the best options. But I also don't think advocates of either are dishonest. I don't think parents are running a scam when they advocate for their kids to receive just as much support as anyone else's. I don't think it's dishonest for them to want access to schools that specialize in their kids' needs, and I don't think it's unfair for those schools to reject students whose needs are very different.