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In 2003, government K-12 schools cost nearly $11,000 per year, per government K-12 child, and this is a deliberate underestimate. It is likely closer to $12,000 or more today.

In my state, per pupil expenditure was less than $8K in 2005. Maybe you should do something about your state and local government rather than railing about mine.

Yes, the reading and math methods used in government schools make children illiterate and innumerate.

My oldest kid left Lincoln Public schools having completed a full university calculus sequence, went on to a dual physics math major, and is now in grad. school in the hard sciences.

The wars over curriculum and school policies, of which evolution is merely one of hundreds, is NOT about per pupil spending. It is about Freedom of Conscience!

Government does not have the right to FORCE children into its indoctrination centers and impose upon them a curriculum that would establish the worldview of the politically powerful and undermine the worldview of those with less power. This applies equally to both the evolutionists and the IDers.

Government has the duty to secure minimal educational standards for children, since it's an unfortunate fact that many parents, left to their own devices, will not do so. The alternatives are to maintain public schools, or regulate carefully a system of private schools (as some other countries do), which IMO would create even more problems. Every advanced society in the world has one of these two systems. You would return us to the dark ages.

In my state, per pupil expenditure was less than $8K in 2005. Maybe you should do something about your state and local government rather than railing about mine.

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It is evident that you did not check my link.

The average cost of educating a government K-12 child per year in the U.S. is over $10,870. These figures were deliberately underestimated and were for the year 2003. The cost today would be even more. This are federal, state, and local costs combined.

Oh,,,,and it does seem that the evolutionists are the fiercest defenders of compulsory attendance, compulsory funded, price-fixed, monopoly government schools.

Again the link and an excerpt:

http://www.reformk12.com/archives/000174.nclk

Doing the Math Here's how we came up with the numbers used in this article.

Using the data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the US population is about 281 million, with about 72 million of these under 18 (pdf). To figure about how many school-age kids there are we divided the 72.3 by 18, then multiplied by 13 to encompass the grades K-12. This gives us an estimate about 52.2 million kids in Kindergarten through 12th grade.

Interestingly, while searching for other statistics we came across this 1999 Census report on education (pdf) with all sorts of breakdowns of the student population, including how many in each category of age. We added up the columns for Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle, and High School and reached a total 52.6 million, satisfyingly close to our original estimate.

Now what about private schools? "Public Schools: Make Them Private" by Milton Friedman, and "How Members of Congress Practice School Choice" by Krista Kafer and Jonathan Butcher from the Heritage Foundation both indicate about 10% of students are enrolled in private schools. Subtracting 10% of 52.6 million for private school and another million for homeschooled kids gives us a final estimate of about 46 million public school kids. To keep the numbers user-friendly we'll call this 50 million.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, taxpayer expenditures for education this school year is over $501.3 billion. Rounding to $500 billion this gives us a ballpark estimate of $10,000 per school-age child. (Note that this is an underestimate, since the actual number of public school students is closer to 46 million, giving us an average of about $10,870 per kid in public school.)

Subtracting persons under 18 from the U.S. population, we get about 209 million folks 18 and over, which we rounded to 200 million, since some folks don't pay taxes. These 200 million citizens pay $500 billion in taxes for education, or $2,500 per taxpayer on average, per year.

Dollar-wise, this means it takes about four taxpayers to pay the government for the education of one child.

You are entitled to believe any freaky thing you want about the world. You are not free to teach your religion under the guise of biology to minor children. That interferes with their freedom of conscience.

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Personally, I subscribe to the theory of evolution.

However, unlike many who are evolutionists, I would never advocate that the government FORCE evolution on other people's children. I would NEVER threaten another parent with police or foster care action if they refused to send their children to a government school in which it was taught. Neither would I threaten a fellow citizen with the sheriff's auction of their home or business if they refused to pay for it.

If evolutionists object to ID being forced on their children why is it so hard for them to see that IDers do not want evolution forced on them?

Government has the duty to secure minimal educational standards for children, since it's an unfortunate fact that many parents, left to their own devices, will not do so.

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Government left to its own devices will not educate children. It is government that is failing in its duty.

The following is a link to StandUp.org. Please check the the reading proficiencies of the Oloney High School and Frankford High School in Philadelphia. Frankford serves my childhood neighborhood. I recently worked in clinics that these two government schools serviced ( or should I provided a disservice?).

Oloney High School has only 6% if its students reading at proficiency level. Frankford is only a little better.

http://www.standup.org/know.html

These two government high schools have plenty of basics to work on before addressing the topic of evolution.