The Albuquerque Journal did an in-depth profile of our new PED Secretary, Ryan Stewart in today’s paper. We at the Rio Grande Foundation sincerely hope that he is able to have a positive influence on New Mexico’s education bureaucracy and that he will push for long-overdue reforms including, but not limited to school choice.
In reading the article I was interested to notice that he has a 9 year old son who attends a “private Quaker school” in Philadelphia. The school went unnamed and being Philadelphia there is more than one Quaker school in town. Regardless, these schools are not cheap. Germantown Friends lists 4th grade tuition as $32,250. Friends Select is another Philadelphia-based Quaker school and it lists tuition as $31,910. A third school Greene Street Friends is “just” $15,900. By comparison Albuquerque Academy tuition is $25,000.
We at the Rio Grande Foundation are not going to denigrate Stewart’s personal decision to put his son in a very expensive private school. We just hope that Stewart is a strong voice for choice when he moves to New Mexico.
A new survey done by the University of Chicago show that support for vouchers and charter schools is strongest among black and Hispanic millennials.
Interestingly, while majorities surveyed also expressed support for charter schools, vouchers received higher levels of support than did charters. Either way, Dr. Stewart can afford to send his child to a $30,000/year school and that is great, but shouldn’t folks making less than $30,000 a year be able to do the same?
