$51,000 Per Student

That is what the District pays in tuition, on average, for each special education student who, because of court mandates, the District is forced to send to private schools. The Washington Post finally did an expose today of that scandal.

The money comes out of the general budget and while regular DC public school children are educated in deplorable conditions,

Rock Creek Academy rents five floors of a glistening office building on Connecticut Avenue NW. Its 251 students attend at the District's expense, and Rock Creek has received $25 million in D.C. funds over the past two years, more than any other private school.

Almost every inch of Rock Creek's bright white walls is covered with painted murals featuring the faces of students. The school recently created shiny new workbooks for a literacy program that uses hip-hop music as the basis for reading and writing exercises. While the city's public schools are cutting back on the arts, Rock Creek is teaching special education students to play drums and guitars and design artwork with the latest professional graphics programs.

I live in an affluent part of DC and the kid across the street, who has a minor reading disorder, gets picked up by a bus (regular students don't get this privilege) and goes to a $70,000 per year school. The US mandate to fund "appropriate" education for disabled students ironically has the impact of leaving the majority of students in classrooms that can't afford chalk and erasers.