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Simply pouring Money into a School District without fixing the fundamental failings of the school district is a terrible investment. Case in point: Dearborn vs

Simply pouring Money into a School District without fixing the fundamental failings of the school district is a terrible investment. Case in point: Dearborn vs Detroit. School Districts Border one another. Detroit gets $16,138 per student and Dearborn $12,128. Detroit Public School District consistently ranks in the bottom 5% of school districts statewide and Dearborn in the top 10% of school districts in the state. If money were the solution why is Detroit not on par with Dearborn despite Detroit spending 30% more per student? https://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx https://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx

bjornsing 11y ago
Different student populations would be my guess.
whatusername 11y ago
Any schools performance should be judged in the delta and not the absolute.
greeneggs 11y ago
From your own link (great source!), it says that the expenditures on instruction are, respectively, $7714 and $7073 per student per year. But Detroit spends much more on support services and food services. > If money were the solution why is Detroit not on par with Dearborn despite Detroit spending 30% more per student? I don't know that anybody is arguing that more money is "the solution," although surely it must be part of any solution. Even if more money was the solution, I don't know why 30% more would be the magic number.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Eh, come on. You can't compare two things which are different in tons of factors. If you want to compare, you need to adjust for those factors. If you wan't to look at them individually, you need to look at pre-investment and post-investment results, and preferably with a control group and a large sample. What you just did makes no sense. For example, let's name a couple predictors of good schools. One is quite easy, it's parents. Are parents wealthy, well-read, command the native language well etc? If so, it's likely they can take time off from work to spend with their kids, and/or hire tutors when necessary, take kids on extracurricular trips to the museum, pay for extra learning materials (e.g. toys at a young age for cognitive skills, fun kid's books for vocabulary, later computers etc), converse with their kids in a way that's conducive to their natural language learning capacity, advise kid's, help them with their homework, pay for sports gear and transportation to get them to sports activities which helps kids have fun, relax, wind down and engage socially with others and build friendships and social skills. Parents are a huge deal, and while poor parents can parent great, too, it's a lot harder and some things are a lot less accessible (tutoring, vacation to Europe, speaking the native language) for poor or minority parents. Alright now that's established, take a look at your locations. Turns out, family income is about 50% higher in Dearborn than in Detroit. That's a big difference, particularly because disposable income is really the big differentiator. If you imagine every household has to spend at least about $20k to make do, and above that there's a degree of 'extra wealth' that can be spent on working less, tutors, sports, extracurricular stuff etc, then a Detroit household income of $25k vs a Dearborn household income of $45k makes a huge difference. And that's just purely the money. Again, if you take money as a proxy of educated parents who know the system, have connections, know the language etc, then there's lots of intangible benefits of having wealthier parents like the kids in Dearborn do, too. And that has a huge effect on whether kids end up doing well in school or not. Anyway that's just one factor to consider, there are lots. I'm not trying to argue here that money solves things, I'm just saying you can't deny it or argue against it on the basis of the example you provided, not even a little bit. After all, you wouldn't be surprised if education improved if both numbers increased by $10k, would you? Or deteriorated if both numbers decreased by $10k, for that matter. Money matters, but it's not the only thing that matters so one school that spends more may not do better than another school that spends less. That having been said, it states total expenditures on education differ by approximately 13%. Not really a big deal. There's things like 'other expenditures' which are huge in Detroit and aren't qualified. > Simply pouring Money into a School District without fixing the fundamental failings of the school district is a terrible investment. Completely agree.

bjornsing 11y ago

Different student populations would be my guess.

whatusername 11y ago

Any schools performance should be judged in the delta and not the absolute.

greeneggs 11y ago

From your own link (great source!), it says that the expenditures on instruction are, respectively, $7714 and $7073 per student per year. But Detroit spends much more on support services and food services. > If money were the solution why is Detroit not on par with Dearborn despite Detroit spending 30% more per student? I don't know that anybody is arguing that more money is "the solution," although surely it must be part of any solution. Even if more money was the solution, I don't know why 30% more would be the magic number.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Eh, come on. You can't compare two things which are different in tons of factors. If you want to compare, you need to adjust for those factors. If you wan't to look at them individually, you need to look at pre-investment and post-investment results, and preferably with a control group and a large sample. What you just did makes no sense. For example, let's name a couple predictors of good schools. One is quite easy, it's parents. Are parents wealthy, well-read, command the native language well etc? If so, it's likely they can take time off from work to spend with their kids, and/or hire tutors when necessary, take kids on extracurricular trips to the museum, pay for extra learning materials (e.g. toys at a young age for cognitive skills, fun kid's books for vocabulary, later computers etc), converse with their kids in a way that's conducive to their natural language learning capacity, advise kid's, help them with their homework, pay for sports gear and transportation to get them to sports activities which helps kids have fun, relax, wind down and engage socially with others and build friendships and social skills. Parents are a huge deal, and while poor parents can parent great, too, it's a lot harder and some things are a lot less accessible (tutoring, vacation to Europe, speaking the native language) for poor or minority parents. Alright now that's established, take a look at your locations. Turns out, family income is about 50% higher in Dearborn than in Detroit. That's a big difference, particularly because disposable income is really the big differentiator. If you imagine every household has to spend at least about $20k to make do, and above that there's a degree of 'extra wealth' that can be spent on working less, tutors, sports, extracurricular stuff etc, then a Detroit household income of $25k vs a Dearborn household income of $45k makes a huge difference. And that's just purely the money. Again, if you take money as a proxy of educated parents who know the system, have connections, know the language etc, then there's lots of intangible benefits of having wealthier parents like the kids in Dearborn do, too. And that has a huge effect on whether kids end up doing well in school or not. Anyway that's just one factor to consider, there are lots. I'm not trying to argue here that money solves things, I'm just saying you can't deny it or argue against it on the basis of the example you provided, not even a little bit. After all, you wouldn't be surprised if education improved if both numbers increased by $10k, would you? Or deteriorated if both numbers decreased by $10k, for that matter. Money matters, but it's not the only thing that matters so one school that spends more may not do better than another school that spends less. That having been said, it states total expenditures on education differ by approximately 13%. Not really a big deal. There's things like 'other expenditures' which are huge in Detroit and aren't qualified. > Simply pouring Money into a School District without fixing the fundamental failings of the school district is a terrible investment. Completely agree.