At 10:1 of and you spend 15k per kid per year. You get 150k per class so 100k for the teacher and 50k for overhead. This is all quite reasonable. The problem is that overhead is much too high and that 1 in 5 kids need additional services that really destroy that ratio and you end up at 30:1
Yeah the private schools that use seminar-style manage it by 1) having much higher incomes than $15k/yr/kid, and 2) avoiding teaching kids who have special needs, since they can cost several times as much to educate as a kid who doesn't, and besides, they tend to drag down test scores and university acceptance rates.
