In response to some comments above, I offer the following:

The FY 2010 total budget for Rocketship Mateo Sheedy is $3,229,381. With an enrollment of 452 students, that is $7,145/student. Excluding almost $600,000 in capital costs, the operating budget is about $2.6 million, or $5,842/student.

The average salary for the eleven teachers at Rocketship Mateo Sheedy is $60,660. With benefits, total average compensation is $74,996. The benefit package more closely reflects the real world, rather than the dreamland that is going to bankrupt so many traditional public school districts.

The Santa Clara County Special Education budget must be much higher than $54,000 per student.

In those circumstances, no decent teacher can lose.

I actually thought the most important part of his hypothetical was not the money but the ability to choose his students.

No we can’t agree. It’s entirely possible that Mike would waste 54K per student a year. As far as I can tell, effective teaching is a complex skill requiring great professional ability on the behalf of the teachers in the classroom and the various structural supports (school staff, curriculum, teaching materials, okay there are some occasional teachers who manage to work magic despite the best efforts of the school administration, but one can’t guarantee hiring superheroes), it’s not some mindless system with a 1:1 correlation between money and output. For example, I recall a teacher once calculating that one day she was interrupted on average once every ten minutes during class teaching time, these sorts of interruptions are going to be a drag on any teacher. If Mike sets up his school in a similar way then I don’t see how 54k a year would help.

No amount of money is enough because money isn’t the factor biases the public education system in the direction of success or failure.

Pick the right students, those whose internal or external resources are sufficient to turn a rotten teacher, a self-involved, self-pitying teacher, into a speed bump and you’ll get great scores but then you’re not taking about getting an education in a school opened to all, you’re talking about climbing Mount Everest.

As for the per student figure, I doubt it’s accurate although some special needs kids suck up simply stupendous amounts of money.

$54,000 per student does move us closer to the twenty-teacher-per-student classroom which I’m informed is what’s necessary to ensure every child gets a good education. Not sure it’s enough money for a whale though.

That’s why Obama’s talking up various kinds of education reform among which is more charters. His state senate district was the south side of Chicago just the sort of place that’s been failed by the education system for decades.

You can bet that when Obama set foot in some little, local church one of the things he heard about was the lousy state of the education system and what he also heard about was how good kids were doing in charters. And how happy parents were their kids was in those charter.

But you keep repeating the NEA talking points. Maybe not quite yet but one day soon you’ll realize that you’re the only person listening to you.

We have a charter here that gets MORE than the state average per student and it gets an award for financial efficiency. I have to admit it takes a set to make that kind of claim.

Gee, they must be the only school in CA that has afterschool programs and computer-aided instruction. Why didn’t the public schools think of that (sarcasm on)?

Right now school districts provide a nice performance “umbrella” so charters can be pretty lousy and still be better then district schools. But as the number of charters increases they’ll inevitably start to compete with each other and then excellence becomes less a matter of personal pride and more a matter of survival.