4 ms·

US government policy in a nutshell: increase standards, don't increase funding.

by guyzero 11y ago

repsilat 11y ago
US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world. Funding has been steadily increasing for decades, though test scores haven't budged: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-books/trends-american-public-schooling-since-1970.png http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-books/t... Perhaps that money should be going into school lunches instead of wherever it is going at the moment...
- ethbro 11y ago
  > instead of wherever it is going at the moment... Testing?
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    Sports?
- Spooky23 11y ago
  A lot of that is different accounting. In most US states, schools are nominally independent bodies of government, they carry all of the costs of facilities, pensions, etc. They also need to comply with all sorts of cost enhancing building and labor standards. So in my city, the school collects $28k/pupil. That includes something like $150M in debt for buildings, salaries, 20% of salaries for pension obligations, 15-20% for employee healthcare, key expenses for the various charter schools, etc. They also need to deal with compliance issues. Because some redneck place in Mississippi would give poor kids a slice of Bologna and stale bread, there are prescribed calorie and nutrition standards that get audited. So you can't prepare fresh foods.
  - knughit 11y ago
    The bans on fresh foods are due to lobbying by national good companies to regulate against local competitors. It isn't because of citizen complaints.
    - thomaskcr 11y ago
      Students also probably don't want it. Fresh foods don't keep as well. I always felt more comfortable eating "crappy" food at school because it's hard to mess up. A couple wilted leaves in a salad doesn't really actually affect the quality, but it does turn you off from eating it. There's no where for me to wash the apple they gave me that was handled who knows how and possibly not washed before I'd be eating it. The Chipotle debacle provides a bit of evidence that fresh and local isn't necessarily the easiest to quality control.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    Why does having prescribed standards prevent fresh foods? It's not that difficult to work out the nutritional value of commercially cooked food, you'll already know portion sizes and what ingredients go into that in order to plan how much you need to feed everyone.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      You need to have people smart enough to interpret the standards and answer questions when audited.
- DamnYuppie 11y ago
  Administrative bloat and overhead. You need ever so many people to help ensure you are complying with all the standards.
- savanaly 11y ago
  >US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world. We actually looked at this in comparative econ, and I believe that the statistic is misleading, at least if it leads us to conclude that teacher quality should be higher in the US. You must correct for the alternative jobs available to the type of person who will become a teacher. In the US, since per capita income is higher, people who are deciding whether to become teachers or not will have to be offered higher salaries in order to do it because the alternative is more attractive, so the fact that per-student funding is higher in the US is actually the least we should expect, not some surprising statistic.
  - repsilat 11y ago
    Rings true to me: it looks like American teachers' salaries are further below average than in most countries: http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salaries-to-earnings.html http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salarie... There are a few questions worth asking about this, though: Do those numbers include benefits? American teachers may get more of those than overseas teachers. And how skewed is that data by the very rich in America? This page is also worth a look: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp The US is "below trend" for per-student spending vs GDP, fit linearly. Not by a huge amount, but it might be wrong to go on about how generously American schools are funded. That does depend on how the money is spent, though. Wages might be higher in places that are more developed, but it's not clear that materials should be more expensive there.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      Some of US teachers' retirement and healthcare benefits would be unnecessary in countries with proper social systems, so I don't think they should be counted in comparisons.

US government policy in a nutshell: increase standards, don't increase funding.

by guyzero 11y ago

US government policy in a nutshell: increase standards, don't increase funding.

US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world. Funding has been steadily increasing for decades, though test scores haven't budged: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-books/trends-american-public-schooling-since-1970.png http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-books/t... Perhaps that money should be going into school lunches instead of wherever it is going at the moment...

ethbro 11y ago
> instead of wherever it is going at the moment... Testing?
- Pxtl 11y ago
  Sports?
Spooky23 11y ago
A lot of that is different accounting. In most US states, schools are nominally independent bodies of government, they carry all of the costs of facilities, pensions, etc. They also need to comply with all sorts of cost enhancing building and labor standards. So in my city, the school collects $28k/pupil. That includes something like $150M in debt for buildings, salaries, 20% of salaries for pension obligations, 15-20% for employee healthcare, key expenses for the various charter schools, etc. They also need to deal with compliance issues. Because some redneck place in Mississippi would give poor kids a slice of Bologna and stale bread, there are prescribed calorie and nutrition standards that get audited. So you can't prepare fresh foods.
- knughit 11y ago
  The bans on fresh foods are due to lobbying by national good companies to regulate against local competitors. It isn't because of citizen complaints.
  - thomaskcr 11y ago
    Students also probably don't want it. Fresh foods don't keep as well. I always felt more comfortable eating "crappy" food at school because it's hard to mess up. A couple wilted leaves in a salad doesn't really actually affect the quality, but it does turn you off from eating it. There's no where for me to wash the apple they gave me that was handled who knows how and possibly not washed before I'd be eating it. The Chipotle debacle provides a bit of evidence that fresh and local isn't necessarily the easiest to quality control.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  Why does having prescribed standards prevent fresh foods? It's not that difficult to work out the nutritional value of commercially cooked food, you'll already know portion sizes and what ingredients go into that in order to plan how much you need to feed everyone.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    You need to have people smart enough to interpret the standards and answer questions when audited.
DamnYuppie 11y ago
Administrative bloat and overhead. You need ever so many people to help ensure you are complying with all the standards.
savanaly 11y ago
>US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world. We actually looked at this in comparative econ, and I believe that the statistic is misleading, at least if it leads us to conclude that teacher quality should be higher in the US. You must correct for the alternative jobs available to the type of person who will become a teacher. In the US, since per capita income is higher, people who are deciding whether to become teachers or not will have to be offered higher salaries in order to do it because the alternative is more attractive, so the fact that per-student funding is higher in the US is actually the least we should expect, not some surprising statistic.
- repsilat 11y ago
  Rings true to me: it looks like American teachers' salaries are further below average than in most countries: http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salaries-to-earnings.html http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salarie... There are a few questions worth asking about this, though: Do those numbers include benefits? American teachers may get more of those than overseas teachers. And how skewed is that data by the very rich in America? This page is also worth a look: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp The US is "below trend" for per-student spending vs GDP, fit linearly. Not by a huge amount, but it might be wrong to go on about how generously American schools are funded. That does depend on how the money is spent, though. Wages might be higher in places that are more developed, but it's not clear that materials should be more expensive there.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Some of US teachers' retirement and healthcare benefits would be unnecessary in countries with proper social systems, so I don't think they should be counted in comparisons.