Slight Correction to My DC Per Pupil Spending Figure

In my IBD piece today I gave total per pupil spending in DC as $29,000 per pupil. That was based on an official k‐​12 audited enrollment count of 44,681, which I was told by a district official included the special needs students placed by the district in private schools. It turns out this was not the case, so we have to add in the special needs students to arrive at the total enrollment figure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that enrollment correction into the IBD in time for publication. Its impact on per pupil spending is not large, however.


The grand total audited enrollment was 48,353 students. From that we have to subtract 997 students in adult education programs and 1,498 students in preschool programs who are not covered by my k‐​12 budget calculations. That leaves us with a k‐​12 audited enrollment of 45,858. Dividing that in to the District of Columbia’s $1.3 billion k‐​12 education budget yields a per pupil spending figure of about $28,000.