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When I think of inequality and opportunity in the US, I think about the education system. Sadly, the quality of K-12 education in the United States is too stro

When I think of inequality and opportunity in the US, I think about the education system. Sadly, the quality of K-12 education in the United States is too strongly tied to economic output / wealth / income of a region, which seems regressive to me.

ars 11y ago
I've felt the same, and it's because schools are mostly funded by real estate taxes. Changing that model would help - even if it was something as simple as pooling all the taxes for an entire state. The difficulty with doing that is that real estate values, and thus taxes, is a very local thing, it's quite hard to set them universally.
Shivetya 11y ago
it certainly isn't confined to the US. You simply have to read the right sites to see that that is a world wide phenomenon. What isn't talked about is that a lot of what keeps people from success also affects their local schools, as in they don't participate because they don't have the drive to do it. The same lack of drive to push ahead.
secstate 11y ago
Having worked as an education beat reporter in a number of really small, really wealth-divided communities for many years, I can tell you that state education is unlikely to ever be the solution to the wealth gap. Honestly, from my time in the trenches of listening to trite, small, yet passionate people discussing some of the harder parts of educating children (i.e. hard to educate when they're coming to school having eaten 3000+ calories from horribly un-nutritious sources), I've learned that there's no easy solution. You can't bus those kids out of the low-tax neighborhoods into good schools if they're still going home to a shit environment. The best you can do is stand up and try to mentor one or two kids in your neighborhood in small ways, and encourage others to do the same. Distributed cultural-standard building. That's the best I've got.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  This is just one part of the equation though. Yes, bad home-environments are worse than bad schools, but we can try to eliminate both
- mc32 11y ago
  But that has a strong cultural component. So we're implicitly talking about changing 'poor people in the us culture'. I say "in the US" because I have been to other countries where even poor people put all their extra (over sustenance) resources into educating their children. Yes, it happens a tiny bit in the US, but not as much as in other places.
stvswn 11y ago
Organizing school districts by geography, and then enforcing that children attend the school nearest them, is a bureaucratic convenience that a) makes it easy to centrally plan resources by forecasting student population, b) eliminates competition for the families' business. In New Orleans they simply started allowing students to attend any school in the city, and the schools' budgets were adjusted for the enrolled population they accepted. The outcomes jumped substantially (there were other reforms as well).

ars 11y ago

I've felt the same, and it's because schools are mostly funded by real estate taxes. Changing that model would help - even if it was something as simple as pooling all the taxes for an entire state. The difficulty with doing that is that real estate values, and thus taxes, is a very local thing, it's quite hard to set them universally.

Shivetya 11y ago

it certainly isn't confined to the US. You simply have to read the right sites to see that that is a world wide phenomenon. What isn't talked about is that a lot of what keeps people from success also affects their local schools, as in they don't participate because they don't have the drive to do it. The same lack of drive to push ahead.

secstate 11y ago

Having worked as an education beat reporter in a number of really small, really wealth-divided communities for many years, I can tell you that state education is unlikely to ever be the solution to the wealth gap. Honestly, from my time in the trenches of listening to trite, small, yet passionate people discussing some of the harder parts of educating children (i.e. hard to educate when they're coming to school having eaten 3000+ calories from horribly un-nutritious sources), I've learned that there's no easy solution. You can't bus those kids out of the low-tax neighborhoods into good schools if they're still going home to a shit environment. The best you can do is stand up and try to mentor one or two kids in your neighborhood in small ways, and encourage others to do the same. Distributed cultural-standard building. That's the best I've got.

CaptSpify 11y ago
This is just one part of the equation though. Yes, bad home-environments are worse than bad schools, but we can try to eliminate both
mc32 11y ago
But that has a strong cultural component. So we're implicitly talking about changing 'poor people in the us culture'. I say "in the US" because I have been to other countries where even poor people put all their extra (over sustenance) resources into educating their children. Yes, it happens a tiny bit in the US, but not as much as in other places.

stvswn 11y ago

Organizing school districts by geography, and then enforcing that children attend the school nearest them, is a bureaucratic convenience that a) makes it easy to centrally plan resources by forecasting student population, b) eliminates competition for the families' business. In New Orleans they simply started allowing students to attend any school in the city, and the schools' budgets were adjusted for the enrolled population they accepted. The outcomes jumped substantially (there were other reforms as well).