That surprised me, so I did some quick fact-checking. This year, Morrison Academy in Taiwan charges about $12,400 per year for a high school student and $10,600 for an elementary student. Fees for boarding, music lessons, lunches, and special needs instruction are extra. I don’t know how close that is to the actual cost per student, because Morrison does offer some discounts to missionaries.

In 2002 the average cost per student in Texas public schools was $10,400.

I’m not sure how the inflation and exchange rates (Morrison’s rates are in New Taiwan Dollars) affect the numbers, but it looks like the numbers are pretty close. And of course I have no idea if Morrison’s rates are typical of international schools.

“Actually, these schools cost much less per-pupil than American public schools. This is true even of heavily regulated American private schools. But without almost any regulation - the international schools have been able to provide high quality instruction at a fraction of the cost. Even with less money coming in, a director of a for-profit International School in Kuwait assured me it was, “very profitable” (his emphasis).”

I’m wondering how this is possible. Is it simply a matter of our government being so bad at managing money efficiently? Do you have actual numbers to make a comparison?

In very few schools, the cost is more (in Europe and America mostly). Without checking, I want to say Oregon is about $13,000 to $14,000 per student in public schools.

For example (I took the highest figures to be conservative):
Dalian American International school in china is more expensive: $16,461
American International School in Kuwait is cheaper: about $9,000
The International School in Abu Dhabi is: $10,891

However, it is my understanding that the cost per child in public schools is not including some large costs (buildings, coaches and other public support facilities that are funded differently). Consequently, there are additional fees for international schools of course.

We have to remember also that the supply of these schools is severely limited, and the price likely reflects a shortage. This is speculative, but backed up by empirical cases in almost any other market, but were more of these schools allowed to exist it is very likely that the price would continue to drop.

Don’t take that paragraph to say that I’m defending the current US public school system (although, I think my own kids did fine with it, I admit to doing a lot of “homeschooling” after they got home each afternoon). My real point is that international schools are a very specialized type of education for a very small segment of the population so it is a little hard to make generalizations that would apply across the board.

Colin wrote:
Cost of living is favorable (especially in non-US, EU countries). That is another major benefit. You can save your salary.

We have to remember also that the supply of these schools is severely limited, and the price likely reflects a shortage. This is speculative, but backed up by empirical cases in almost any other market, but were more of these schools allowed to exist it is very likely that the price would continue to drop.

Assuming that they are trying to recruit American’s as teachers rather than locals, they WILL have to pay higher than normal wages. It almost always costs more to recruit someone to work far from their native land than if you were to pay them for the same job at home, and American’s are on average far more productive (and therefore should be higher earning) than the average in any other country.

Regarding shortages, standard market theory suggests that the supply of any product will expand to fulfill the demand at cost plus the minimum profit considered acceptable to the provider. This would suggest that despite the shortage of international schools, there is in fact NOT a shortage (unless there exists some government pressure against them?). As Thainamu pointed out, the average child attending an international school is likely to be of a higher quality than the average here, which would further reduce the educational costs.

Other than the cost of books, there are NO essential costs to education. Students have in the past educated themselves from books, and any college graduate is more than capable of teaching their kids through grade school. The cost of our schooling system is based on the model we have chosen (one “expert” teacher teaching a large group simultaneously in a building dedicated to that purpose). The primary need to improve education is for interested parents to encourage their children to learn important skills and to practice what they are learning. Not until high school does teaching the average student require special knowledge. (This is NOT true of many special needs students who may require extensive special knowledge to teach.)

Most teachers are educated in crowd control and psychology, again because of the method of teaching which we pursue. Home study combined with collaborative projects utilizing specialist knowledge would be a far cheaper and effective method of teaching. Sitting around having someone lecture you about material you could more easily read in a book is simply a waste of everyone’s time (particularly that of the person with specialist knowledge). Far better that students study at home, and ask questions of the specialist only as they have need. (Students who cannot yet read need little teaching that a college educated parent cannot readily provide.)

Court: Teaching Credential Required To Home School wrote:
LOS ANGELES (CBS13/AP) ―

California parents who don’t have teaching credentials no longer can home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeals.

My wife has already stated in the past that she strongly doesn’t want to raise children in California (where we currently live). This may well clinch the issue, since we will likely homeschool our children at least through grade school (I was homeschooled through highschool, and have no regrets). Since homeschoolers generally test much better than public or even private schools, adding requirements beyond the same curriculum requirements faced by other schools is nothing more than elitism and an attempt to use force to address competition.

adding requirements beyond the same curriculum requirements faced by other schools is nothing more than elitism and an attempt to use force to address competition.

These kind of things, in my opinion, plainly reveal that the public education system is primarily concerned with economic considerations (monopoly, competitive advantage, market power, market control) rather than education. If the government were really looking to encourage education, they would plainly allow homeschooling, remove licensing and standard requirements and provide tax breaks for all education.