Saving citizens a billion a year

Budget and Tax News, a publication of The Heartland Institute in Chicago, reports that homeschooling and other forms of private education are saving North Carolina taxpayers over a billion dollars per year in education costs:

By some estimates, nearly 40 cents of every revenue dollar in North Carolina goes to K-12 education, making it the largest category in the state’s $21.4 billion budget. According to statistics released by the North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE), which monitors homeschoolers and traditional private and religious schools, some 10.4 percent of school-aged children in North Carolina were educated outside public school classrooms in the 2007-08 school year. About 98,000 students attend conventional nonpublic schools, while more than 70,000 are homeschooled.

DNPE’s director, Rod Helder, told Carolina Journal last year the savings to the state in fiscal year 2006-07 were $1.3 billion, reflecting higher per-pupil expenses in the public schools and continuous growth in the number of nonpublic school students. Since the 2004-05 school year, the number of students being homeschooled has increased almost 22 percent, while public school enrollments increased by 6.6 percent.

“You see how much money the public schools did not have to spend,” Helder told Carolina Journal.

The article by NCHSN editor Hal Young appears in the January 2009 print edition of B&TN but is available online as well.