How much do we spend to educate a child?

And how much should we be spending?

As part of the push for vouchers (through “ESA” bills like South Carolina’s S.935), proponents are going to be increasingly making the same old claims about how much SC supposedly spends on education “per student,” and feigning shock and horror at whatever they purport that number to be (and I’ve already seen everything between $12K and $17K “per student”). Most of these claims will be misleading in several ways, so it’s good to have some context.

South Carolina law requires levels of funding “per-pupil” through a formula that sends different amounts of funding to each district based on a number of variables determined by a review commitee. Obviously, this doesn’t mean each individual student in the state receives services equivalent to that money; instead, several formulas determine how much money districts get based on the number of students who fall into various categories in the district. (This is important, since voucher proponents often argue that educational funding should or al…