13 ms·

Poverty, segregation persist in U.S. schools, report says

75 points by mtberatwork 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago
The report has some very misleading assertions about school funding. It asserts: > On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, according the study. The source of that statistics is this report: https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps2015_TheEducationTrust1.pdf https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps20... (Figure 1). But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts. For example, Figure 1 shows Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois as states with the biggest (double digit) gaps. But accounting for federal funds, the gap disappears in New York, Maryland, and Illinois: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/?utm_term=.2cfe0ec5d6f9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2... (change the drop down to state, local, and federal funding). In Maryland, for example, Baltimore City has much higher spending per student than wealthy (and much more expensive) suburbs like Montgomery County: https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2016/04/26/chart-shows-marylands-school-funding-per-student/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/20....
- baldfat 9y ago
  > But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts. Federal Funding is very low and has shrunk to 10% of funding for education. With education dollars it comes with designations and paper work. Most school districts have to spend hundreads of thousands of dollars on admins and staff to follow through with Federal funding. My inner city district had to fire 3 principles so we could recieve $2,000,000 in funding in 3 years. We got $400,000 and probably lost money out of the deal.
  - rndmize 9y ago
    Federal funding for schools shouldn't exist, imo. I'd prefer to see states handle everything related to funding and operating their education systems and the Dept of Ed perform a metrics/analytics/analysis/recommendation function, so that effective changes made by one state can be propagated out to the others, if they want it.
    - Retric 9y ago
      IMO, we should only have Federal funding for schools. Having local, state, and federal involvement in funding adds complexity without providing any net benefit. EX: People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.
      - rndmize 9y ago
        Disagree. Moving funding to a federal level might be more efficient but gives me, as a resident of one particular state, less control over how much is spent on education. I have zero interest in seeing a nationally funded education system gutted because a party I don't support is elected from states I don't live in that have outsize influence. Further, the "laboratories of democracy" model means that if I don't like how my state is doing education, I'm free to move to another one. > People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits. Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. You don't think states are big enough to get economies of scale?
        Retric 9y ago
        > Not sure... scale? If some state say Iowa sees most young people move out of state then they don't get direct economic benefits from educating well. Alternatively, Virginia may benefit from importing an educated population and have less economic incentive to educate it's own population well. Yes, their are incentives to educate your own children well, but a Florida retiree may not have any kids or grand kids in state and thus not care about educating people without a direct connection to them. Those connections and thus incentives become more direct at the national level.
- jp_rider 9y ago
  Since Baltimore City is getting more money per student, why aren't they able to properly maintain their buildings [1]? Poor management? Corruption? Lack of heating and working bathrooms is inexcusable. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-winter-heating.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-wint...
  - panzagl 9y ago
    Older infrastructure requiring more maintenance, plus higher expenses/labor costs of city vs suburbs.
    - millermp12 9y ago
      Sure. That's the ticket. "older infrastructure". Of course!
    - zip1234 9y ago
      How expensive would it be to put space heaters in every classroom? Even window heaters are only $500. Surely a school district that spends $17m a year on maintenance can come up with that. My guess is bureaucracy/mismanagement is the real problem. The larger a school district is, the more bureaucracy.
      - zip1234 9y ago
        Ok--http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci-schools-money-returned-20180104-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci... The money is there apparently.
      - alphabettsy 9y ago
        They certainly have a problem with mismanagement, but having to use space heaters to warm a classroom means things are going seriously wrong.
      - panzagl 9y ago
        Ever plug in 20 space heaters at once in a building whose electrical systems are over 50 years old?
kelukelugames 9y ago
>For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Are there studies about this? What attracts more talent: a) Pay increase for everyone in an industry. b) Larger pay increases, but limited to the best performers.
- rayiner 9y ago
  To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely doesn’t even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty? We’re going to address the economic disadvantages faced by black and Hispanic children, by giving more money to teachers (80%+ of whom are white)? Trevor Noah makes a really good point in his autobiography. He recounts the story of someone giving him a CD writer, which enabled him to go into the bootlegging business in post apartheid South Africa. He explains that what poor people need is capital, like that CD writer. You can teach a man to fish, he explains, but if you don’t give him a fishing rod you haven’t done him any good.
  - ythn 9y ago
    > To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely doesn’t even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty? On the flip side, though, straight up wealth distribution to the poor has a huge waste factor, though. I work with poor people at my church, and a lot of times they have no idea where their money is even going. They see a predatory letter with scary red letters and they send money to it, even though it's not even a bill! The bills they are getting are for services they aren't even using (expensive cable plan, etc.). Yes, the poor need more money, but they also desperately need mentors and education.
    - tabeth 9y ago
      Wealth distribution is one thing, the process of wealth distribution is another.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers From what I understand having worked with educators the 3rd is the only problem that really impacts results. You don't need a new textbook to study anything about physics math or history below the college level (with the possible exception of certain history topics but even that can be a lesson about history if you want it to be one). They also complained about how administrative decisions made for political reasons (e.g. "We need to be seen using our money on something quantifiable so you're getting new desks" or "We need to look up to date, force technology into your lessons, I don't care how") forced good teachers to perform at a lower level. Which the article does get around to in the last sentence: "Increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries." Good teachers teaching in bad schools get some experience on their resume and jump ship to somewhere better. Wash rinse repeat. If you're good at your job of course you work your way up to some rich district where resources aren't a problem.
- indubitable 9y ago
  > You don't need a new textbook to study anything about physics math or history below the college level In general this is true, but there are some major exceptions. Math is now taught vastly differently than when I learned it. The interesting thing is I did not learn it how it was taught, but internalized it differently and ended up competing in Math Olympiads / number sense and all that fun stuff very successfully. The very cool thing is that math textbooks now teach it in a way closely resembling to how I internalized it. For instance adding by powers of ten and the nearest ten. What is 29 + 77? You can just change that to 30 + 77 (remembering you now 'owe' one) which can then be changed to 30 + 70 + 7. So we end up with 107 - 1 which is 106. Lots of words, but it's a process that lets you solve most any problem more or less instantly, in your head. It also helps for understanding. Similarly for multiplication. What's 17 x 19? We can borrow 17 and change that to 17 x 20 which can be recognized as 17 x 2 x 10 which is clearly 340. Since we borrowed 17 we subtract it again using a basic strategy of 340 - 10 - 7 = 323. These sort of thought processes I think also help make math more fun since it's more of a puzzle that a grind. And the logical but abstract thinking involved in figuring out the quickest way to solve the problems also mirrors more the much more advanced mathematics that they will get into in college.
dwater 9y ago
In my opinion this article, and the related report[0] bury the lede, which is that segregation is the bigger problem than funding. I only read the executive summary of the report but the first 3 paragraphs address funding inequalities, and the last addresses segregation. This American Life did an excellent episode on this in 2015[1] that reflected my experience teaching in the public schools in Washington DC. DCPS has a high per-pupil funding[2] but not correspondingly high outcomes. And part of that is because DC, like most minority communities, is old with infrastructure suffering from decades of deferred maintenance. But I also worked in a minority school in a segregated suburban district[3], that was not old, did not have deferred maintenance, and was working with essentially the same resources as the majority white schools across the county; and students in that school were remarkably similar to those I worked with in DC. [0] http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live... [2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_in... [3] http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-out-henrico-schools-for-segregation http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-out-h...
- bluthru 9y ago
  >which is that segregation is the bigger problem than funding Segregation isn't addressing the root problem, it's just hoping that spreading out the problem (households that don't value education) will mask issues. If one school was 100% Asian-American and a neighboring school was 100% white, the two schools wouldn't underperform because of segregation. EDIT: Instead of downvoting, can someone refute my point about the Asian-American and white schools? Segregation itself isn't the issue.
  - dwater 9y ago
    > Segregation isn't addressing the root problem, it's just hoping that spreading out the problem (households that don't value education) will mask issues. It reads like you are saying that the root problem is households that don't value education, to which I would say that perhaps students that don't value education is the root problem. And then, perhaps spreading those students out into classes and schools among students who do value education won't mask that problem, but actually change the attitudes and eventually behaviors of those you are trying to help.
indubitable 9y ago
Why is the assumption that throwing money at the problem can fix it? The US already spends more than almost any other nation else on education. And the few places that spend more than us, Austria/Luxembourg/Norway/Switzerland aren't the ones rocking amazing educational outputs. This [1] page offers a raw table with PISA, a standardized educational performance test, results across nations. We're now losing to places like Vietnam in Math/Science. This article mentions we spend about $11,000 per student on education. The per capita GDP of Vietnam is $2,305. Their per child spending is, in turn, going to likely be some fraction of that. It's getting quite silly. This [2] is an interactive page allowing you to compare nations' performance based on OECD PISA scores across the world using a wide array of metrics - click on a country to get details and the ability to compare that country to others. The US problem is not with how much money schools get. It's not even with how much money teachers' get. You can find data on that here [3]. The problem is not money. So what is the problem? I think that's why people like to just blame money, or the lack thereof. It's easy. Trying to figure out what the actual problem is is going to be extremely difficult. And as political correctness is such a hot trend in the US, some factors cannot even be considered which isn't exactly productive for trying to figure out the most effective solution. [1] - http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-mat... [2] - https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ [3] - https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pnutjam 9y ago
  There's alot of evidence that he disparity between schools and lack of equality in opportunity are the problem. This article is trying to address this. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2008/06/10/4567/ensuring-equal-opportunity-in-public-education/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/repor...
  - indubitable 9y ago
danans 9y ago
> For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Teachers in high-needs schools are dealing much more frequently with students who have severe issues stemming from poverty, trauma, and lack of support in their families and communities. Those factors are equal to or greater than variation in teacher quality, which no doubt exists. Arguments about the mechanism of teacher pay distribution distracts from the reality that many teachers in poor districts are functioning as social workers for the effects of poverty, neglect, and violence borne by the children before they arrive in the classroom. Teaching in such environments will always be a lot harder than it is in stable middle class and higher income communities. If poor schools are expected to bear the costs of the social dysfunction created by the larger society, then either the teachers should be paid for providing those services, or we should invest in other capacities, inside and outside the school, to mitigate the needs for these services in the classroom, freeing up teachers for actual teaching. But until those things are addressed, it's just a convenient distraction to frame the fundamental issue as a problem of how to use teacher pay as a carrot.
- solatic 9y ago
  I think your viewpoint invites wider questions on how the problems in such environments ought to be solved and what such environments ought to look like. In a word, what's lacking from these communities is, in a couple of words, stability and security. Some children have parents who are either homeless or constantly on the verge of homelessness; some children have parents who have difficulty putting food on the table; some children come from households with absent or abusive parents. How, exactly, would hiring more social workers for schools solve this problem? Ought social workers be able to go into childrens' homes and intervene in some way? Put food on the table, pay the parents' past-due bills, catch abusers red-handed and put a stop to them? I'm not so sure this is the answer, because apart from the fact that doing so falls somewhere on the spectrum between absurd and enablement, in extreme cases, society already removes children from abusive homes to put them in foster care. And it doesn't seem to me like the numbers and research bear out about outcomes for fostered children being on par with children from more privileged backgrounds. Instead, funding needs to be directed towards stabilizing the parents' environment. That means more public works projects (for stable employment), more affordable apartments (for stable housing), longer school days with funding for post-schoolday extracurriculars and funding for free daycare for younger children (so that parents can stay at work while their children are looked after), exchanging prosecution for funded treatment for drug addicts. When the parents have a stable environment, then the child has a stable environment.
rdtsc 9y ago
> The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most funded with state and local tax dollars. That has always baffled me living in America - how poor districts end up being doubly punished because their children also get less funds, and less resources. If anything, shouldn't it be the opposite, if poverty is prevalent, wouldn't that school get more funds? A wealthy district can probably manage and do well for its kids even with less funds because it probably can have less teacher, less time addressing and manages trauma and behavior stemming from growing up poor and everything associated with. There is an interesting phenomenon at play, I have heard more about "think of the children first" in this country yet when it comes to actions they point in the opposite - "think of children last, think of profits first" basically. > “How much is spent on schools is not as important as how the money is spent.” For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Throwing wild ideas around -- I think it has something to do with teachers already being burnt out and used to certain patterns of behavior, most likely in response to lack of support, funding, some because classes are too large, regulations, etc. Giving them a raise might not break that pattern and make any difference. I think they'd need to bring in fresh teachers and give them higher salaries to start with. Fresh doesn't have to be new graduates, could also mean teachers from out of town. Wonder if it makes sense - to provide incentives for teachers to move to other schools. Say if they move they get a higher salary, it would be federally sponsored, and include, generous bonuses and all paid relocation etc. Thinking about the above, try to remember if you knew a burnt out coworker, or yourself if you were burnt out - would getting a salary bump make that go away? I have not seen it yet. The same is true for other professions I imagine.

75 points by mtberatwork 9y ago

The report has some very misleading assertions about school funding. It asserts: > On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, according the study. The source of that statistics is this report: https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps2015_TheEducationTrust1.pdf https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps20... (Figure 1). But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts. For example, Figure 1 shows Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois as states with the biggest (double digit) gaps. But accounting for federal funds, the gap disappears in New York, Maryland, and Illinois: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/?utm_term=.2cfe0ec5d6f9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2... (change the drop down to state, local, and federal funding). In Maryland, for example, Baltimore City has much higher spending per student than wealthy (and much more expensive) suburbs like Montgomery County: https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2016/04/26/chart-shows-marylands-school-funding-per-student/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/20....

baldfat 9y ago
> But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts. Federal Funding is very low and has shrunk to 10% of funding for education. With education dollars it comes with designations and paper work. Most school districts have to spend hundreads of thousands of dollars on admins and staff to follow through with Federal funding. My inner city district had to fire 3 principles so we could recieve $2,000,000 in funding in 3 years. We got $400,000 and probably lost money out of the deal.
- rndmize 9y ago
  Federal funding for schools shouldn't exist, imo. I'd prefer to see states handle everything related to funding and operating their education systems and the Dept of Ed perform a metrics/analytics/analysis/recommendation function, so that effective changes made by one state can be propagated out to the others, if they want it.
  - Retric 9y ago
    IMO, we should only have Federal funding for schools. Having local, state, and federal involvement in funding adds complexity without providing any net benefit. EX: People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.
    - rndmize 9y ago
      Disagree. Moving funding to a federal level might be more efficient but gives me, as a resident of one particular state, less control over how much is spent on education. I have zero interest in seeing a nationally funded education system gutted because a party I don't support is elected from states I don't live in that have outsize influence. Further, the "laboratories of democracy" model means that if I don't like how my state is doing education, I'm free to move to another one. > People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits. Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. You don't think states are big enough to get economies of scale?
      - Retric 9y ago
        > Not sure... scale? If some state say Iowa sees most young people move out of state then they don't get direct economic benefits from educating well. Alternatively, Virginia may benefit from importing an educated population and have less economic incentive to educate it's own population well. Yes, their are incentives to educate your own children well, but a Florida retiree may not have any kids or grand kids in state and thus not care about educating people without a direct connection to them. Those connections and thus incentives become more direct at the national level.
jp_rider 9y ago
Since Baltimore City is getting more money per student, why aren't they able to properly maintain their buildings [1]? Poor management? Corruption? Lack of heating and working bathrooms is inexcusable. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-winter-heating.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-wint...
- panzagl 9y ago
  Older infrastructure requiring more maintenance, plus higher expenses/labor costs of city vs suburbs.
  - millermp12 9y ago
    Sure. That's the ticket. "older infrastructure". Of course!
  - zip1234 9y ago
    How expensive would it be to put space heaters in every classroom? Even window heaters are only $500. Surely a school district that spends $17m a year on maintenance can come up with that. My guess is bureaucracy/mismanagement is the real problem. The larger a school district is, the more bureaucracy.
    - zip1234 9y ago
      Ok--http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci-schools-money-returned-20180104-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci... The money is there apparently.
    - alphabettsy 9y ago
      They certainly have a problem with mismanagement, but having to use space heaters to warm a classroom means things are going seriously wrong.
    - panzagl 9y ago
      Ever plug in 20 space heaters at once in a building whose electrical systems are over 50 years old?

kelukelugames 9y ago

>For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Are there studies about this? What attracts more talent: a) Pay increase for everyone in an industry. b) Larger pay increases, but limited to the best performers.

rayiner 9y ago
To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely doesn’t even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty? We’re going to address the economic disadvantages faced by black and Hispanic children, by giving more money to teachers (80%+ of whom are white)? Trevor Noah makes a really good point in his autobiography. He recounts the story of someone giving him a CD writer, which enabled him to go into the bootlegging business in post apartheid South Africa. He explains that what poor people need is capital, like that CD writer. You can teach a man to fish, he explains, but if you don’t give him a fishing rod you haven’t done him any good.
- ythn 9y ago
  > To solve the problem of inner city poverty, we need to take public money and give more of it to some privileged college-educated person who likely doesn’t even live in the neighborhoods plagued by poverty? On the flip side, though, straight up wealth distribution to the poor has a huge waste factor, though. I work with poor people at my church, and a lot of times they have no idea where their money is even going. They see a predatory letter with scary red letters and they send money to it, even though it's not even a bill! The bills they are getting are for services they aren't even using (expensive cable plan, etc.). Yes, the poor need more money, but they also desperately need mentors and education.
  - tabeth 9y ago
    Wealth distribution is one thing, the process of wealth distribution is another.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers From what I understand having worked with educators the 3rd is the only problem that really impacts results. You don't need a new textbook to study anything about physics math or history below the college level (with the possible exception of certain history topics but even that can be a lesson about history if you want it to be one). They also complained about how administrative decisions made for political reasons (e.g. "We need to be seen using our money on something quantifiable so you're getting new desks" or "We need to look up to date, force technology into your lessons, I don't care how") forced good teachers to perform at a lower level. Which the article does get around to in the last sentence: "Increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries." Good teachers teaching in bad schools get some experience on their resume and jump ship to somewhere better. Wash rinse repeat. If you're good at your job of course you work your way up to some rich district where resources aren't a problem.

indubitable 9y ago
> You don't need a new textbook to study anything about physics math or history below the college level In general this is true, but there are some major exceptions. Math is now taught vastly differently than when I learned it. The interesting thing is I did not learn it how it was taught, but internalized it differently and ended up competing in Math Olympiads / number sense and all that fun stuff very successfully. The very cool thing is that math textbooks now teach it in a way closely resembling to how I internalized it. For instance adding by powers of ten and the nearest ten. What is 29 + 77? You can just change that to 30 + 77 (remembering you now 'owe' one) which can then be changed to 30 + 70 + 7. So we end up with 107 - 1 which is 106. Lots of words, but it's a process that lets you solve most any problem more or less instantly, in your head. It also helps for understanding. Similarly for multiplication. What's 17 x 19? We can borrow 17 and change that to 17 x 20 which can be recognized as 17 x 2 x 10 which is clearly 340. Since we borrowed 17 we subtract it again using a basic strategy of 340 - 10 - 7 = 323. These sort of thought processes I think also help make math more fun since it's more of a puzzle that a grind. And the logical but abstract thinking involved in figuring out the quickest way to solve the problems also mirrors more the much more advanced mathematics that they will get into in college.

dwater 9y ago

In my opinion this article, and the related report[0] bury the lede, which is that segregation is the bigger problem than funding. I only read the executive summary of the report but the first 3 paragraphs address funding inequalities, and the last addresses segregation. This American Life did an excellent episode on this in 2015[1] that reflected my experience teaching in the public schools in Washington DC. DCPS has a high per-pupil funding[2] but not correspondingly high outcomes. And part of that is because DC, like most minority communities, is old with infrastructure suffering from decades of deferred maintenance. But I also worked in a minority school in a segregated suburban district[3], that was not old, did not have deferred maintenance, and was working with essentially the same resources as the majority white schools across the county; and students in that school were remarkably similar to those I worked with in DC. [0] http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live... [2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_in... [3] http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-out-henrico-schools-for-segregation http://www.nbc12.com/story/28265605/ucla-study-singles-out-h...

bluthru 9y ago
>which is that segregation is the bigger problem than funding Segregation isn't addressing the root problem, it's just hoping that spreading out the problem (households that don't value education) will mask issues. If one school was 100% Asian-American and a neighboring school was 100% white, the two schools wouldn't underperform because of segregation. EDIT: Instead of downvoting, can someone refute my point about the Asian-American and white schools? Segregation itself isn't the issue.
- dwater 9y ago
  > Segregation isn't addressing the root problem, it's just hoping that spreading out the problem (households that don't value education) will mask issues. It reads like you are saying that the root problem is households that don't value education, to which I would say that perhaps students that don't value education is the root problem. And then, perhaps spreading those students out into classes and schools among students who do value education won't mask that problem, but actually change the attitudes and eventually behaviors of those you are trying to help.

indubitable 9y ago

Why is the assumption that throwing money at the problem can fix it? The US already spends more than almost any other nation else on education. And the few places that spend more than us, Austria/Luxembourg/Norway/Switzerland aren't the ones rocking amazing educational outputs. This [1] page offers a raw table with PISA, a standardized educational performance test, results across nations. We're now losing to places like Vietnam in Math/Science. This article mentions we spend about $11,000 per student on education. The per capita GDP of Vietnam is $2,305. Their per child spending is, in turn, going to likely be some fraction of that. It's getting quite silly. This [2] is an interactive page allowing you to compare nations' performance based on OECD PISA scores across the world using a wide array of metrics - click on a country to get details and the ability to compare that country to others. The US problem is not with how much money schools get. It's not even with how much money teachers' get. You can find data on that here [3]. The problem is not money. So what is the problem? I think that's why people like to just blame money, or the lack thereof. It's easy. Trying to figure out what the actual problem is is going to be extremely difficult. And as political correctness is such a hot trend in the US, some factors cannot even be considered which isn't exactly productive for trying to figure out the most effective solution. [1] - http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-mat... [2] - https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ [3] - https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pnutjam 9y ago
There's alot of evidence that he disparity between schools and lack of equality in opportunity are the problem. This article is trying to address this. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2008/06/10/4567/ensuring-equal-opportunity-in-public-education/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/repor...
- indubitable 9y ago

danans 9y ago

> For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Teachers in high-needs schools are dealing much more frequently with students who have severe issues stemming from poverty, trauma, and lack of support in their families and communities. Those factors are equal to or greater than variation in teacher quality, which no doubt exists. Arguments about the mechanism of teacher pay distribution distracts from the reality that many teachers in poor districts are functioning as social workers for the effects of poverty, neglect, and violence borne by the children before they arrive in the classroom. Teaching in such environments will always be a lot harder than it is in stable middle class and higher income communities. If poor schools are expected to bear the costs of the social dysfunction created by the larger society, then either the teachers should be paid for providing those services, or we should invest in other capacities, inside and outside the school, to mitigate the needs for these services in the classroom, freeing up teachers for actual teaching. But until those things are addressed, it's just a convenient distraction to frame the fundamental issue as a problem of how to use teacher pay as a carrot.

solatic 9y ago
I think your viewpoint invites wider questions on how the problems in such environments ought to be solved and what such environments ought to look like. In a word, what's lacking from these communities is, in a couple of words, stability and security. Some children have parents who are either homeless or constantly on the verge of homelessness; some children have parents who have difficulty putting food on the table; some children come from households with absent or abusive parents. How, exactly, would hiring more social workers for schools solve this problem? Ought social workers be able to go into childrens' homes and intervene in some way? Put food on the table, pay the parents' past-due bills, catch abusers red-handed and put a stop to them? I'm not so sure this is the answer, because apart from the fact that doing so falls somewhere on the spectrum between absurd and enablement, in extreme cases, society already removes children from abusive homes to put them in foster care. And it doesn't seem to me like the numbers and research bear out about outcomes for fostered children being on par with children from more privileged backgrounds. Instead, funding needs to be directed towards stabilizing the parents' environment. That means more public works projects (for stable employment), more affordable apartments (for stable housing), longer school days with funding for post-schoolday extracurriculars and funding for free daycare for younger children (so that parents can stay at work while their children are looked after), exchanging prosecution for funded treatment for drug addicts. When the parents have a stable environment, then the child has a stable environment.

rdtsc 9y ago

> The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most funded with state and local tax dollars. That has always baffled me living in America - how poor districts end up being doubly punished because their children also get less funds, and less resources. If anything, shouldn't it be the opposite, if poverty is prevalent, wouldn't that school get more funds? A wealthy district can probably manage and do well for its kids even with less funds because it probably can have less teacher, less time addressing and manages trauma and behavior stemming from growing up poor and everything associated with. There is an interesting phenomenon at play, I have heard more about "think of the children first" in this country yet when it comes to actions they point in the opposite - "think of children last, think of profits first" basically. > “How much is spent on schools is not as important as how the money is spent.” For instance, he said, simply increasing the salaries of all teachers in a high-need school district won’t have as much of an impact as identifying high-performing teachers and increasing their salaries. Throwing wild ideas around -- I think it has something to do with teachers already being burnt out and used to certain patterns of behavior, most likely in response to lack of support, funding, some because classes are too large, regulations, etc. Giving them a raise might not break that pattern and make any difference. I think they'd need to bring in fresh teachers and give them higher salaries to start with. Fresh doesn't have to be new graduates, could also mean teachers from out of town. Wonder if it makes sense - to provide incentives for teachers to move to other schools. Say if they move they get a higher salary, it would be federally sponsored, and include, generous bonuses and all paid relocation etc. Thinking about the above, try to remember if you knew a burnt out coworker, or yourself if you were burnt out - would getting a salary bump make that go away? I have not seen it yet. The same is true for other professions I imagine.