At roughly $10,000 per student per year, the average American school is spending $250,000–$300,000 per classroom of twenty-five to thirty students. Where is that money going? Arguably, most of it should be going to teachers; but that isn’t how it works. Teachers’ salaries are a relatively small part of the expenditure. If we generously put a teacher’s salary and benefits at $100,000 per year—teachers in most of the country make far less—and the cost of maintaining a 1,000-square-foot classroom at $30,000 per year (a figure comparable to leasing high-end office space), we still have
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