5 ms·

Even shorter term I'd like us to move away from local property taxes being used for local schools. The state government should have a statewide pool of money th

by verst 6y ago

Even shorter term I'd like us to move away from local property taxes being used for local schools. The state government should have a statewide pool of money they allocate to schools based on enrollment numbers, cost of living. This should be sufficiently funded such that teachers can make a living wage in the local school district. Those who don't like this can still send their kids to private schools.

dorchadas 6y ago
I'm a teacher myself, and I think this is very much needed. Right now, good neighborhoods just get better schools, while bad neighborhoods get worse. It's a horribly vicious circle, and shows even in areas where there's only one school (my county, the 5th biggest in the state, only has 25k people and one high school) if there's a huge amount of poverty (something like 65% of our students are on free or reduced lunch; over 80% live with either a single parent, grandparent(s), or other guardian), so it doesn't get the funding that, say, the school in the rich neighboorhood of the nearest big city gets, and it shows (it also doesn't help that our guidance councilor is ignorant and actively trying to make everything easier and less rigorous, but that's a different story). A state wide collection and distribution would help a lot; sadly, you're right and a lot of the parents in those better-off neighborhoods won't like it.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  When I moved to the US, this was one of the things that surprised me the most. I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. The fact that all kids don't get equal opportunity makes it feel like a very broken society.
  - dorchadas 6y ago
    I agree. I also think it fosters a sense of anti-intellectualism in those schools that are poorer as well. I've noticed the difference in my hometown (where I now teach) in the 10 years since I've graduated. I've talked about it with another teacher who went to school there as well (I will say, that's one thing they're good at; they usually hire locals, for better or worse). My mom was a teacher there for 30 years as well, as she's seen it too. I don't live in the district I teach in, but I've already said that if I'm still teaching there (a big if) and have kids (another big if), I won't send them there if they're academically inclined. The school is routinely trying to gut AP classes in favor of "dual credit" (which is a joke) and they're removing normal accelerated classes for increased 'rigor' in others; which doesn't happen, as you get accelerated kids mixed in with kids in a collaborative class because the guidance doesn't care enough to separate them, and then we're also forced to cater to the lowest common denominator by administration as well... And "differentiated learning" just basically becomes "Oh, you're smart, here's another worksheet". It's, sadly, becoming a race to the bottom, and it's something the more wealthy schools in the area I live at wouldn't have.
  - tyoma 6y ago
    While the disparity seems like its not at the same level, schools even in fairly egalitarian European countries are not all equal. For an example, see the discussion about the Amsterdam school lottery (https://medium.com/social-choice/why-a-dutch-court-stopped-high-school-students-from-exchanging-schools-1315303a48b6 https://medium.com/social-choice/why-a-dutch-court-stopped-h...).
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    >I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. It's not the schools they are looking for, it's neighborhoods where the proportion of families that have parents who are well educated and higher earning, in order to put their kids in an environment with a higher proportion of kids who have more resourceful parents. Any school with motivated kids with stable home environments will be "good schools". And since schools draw their pool of students from the neighborhood, it eventually turns into a system where parents will cluster together by income, as income determines how much of a mortgage you can afford.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    That has nothing to do with school funding. Your coworkers were looking for neighborhoods where they don’t have to send their kids to school alongside black or Hispanic kids. Here in Maryland, my exurban county spends $14,400 per student per year. Baltimore spends $17,500, despite having substantially lower cost of living. (Even excluding federal funding, Baltimore spends $2,000 more.) The rich suburbs around DC spend $16,900. The rich Virginia county where I grew up, on the other side of DC, spends $15,300. DC itself spends $21,000 per student. DC also has some of the highest teacher salaries in the country. It has brand new, beautiful LEED Gold high schools your coworkers would never send their kids to because those schools are 99% black. Inside DC itself, schools are funded equally, but houses in neighborhoods districts to majority white schools cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more. (When we talk about “systemic racism” in this country, that’s what it means. It means that, even in blue states that are willing to provide ample funding to majority-minority schools, white and Asian parents would rather spend hundreds of thousands more on housing to avoid sending their kids to those well funded schools.)
- verst 6y ago
  I grew up in Germany and went to public schools there. I just recently became a homeowner in Seattle. I have no ties to the local schools here and would much prefer everyone got equal opportunities and education. I'd like to see people succeed in this society on merit, not privilege - this starts with education. Germany uses a decentralized system where the federal government and state government allocate budget to schools with some small additional contributions by local districts. Apparently 80% of the budget is spent on salaries. In 2016 the total education spending was 7100 Euros per student per year. This system seems to work quite well. P.S.: I was a fool for not taking advantage of free university in Germany.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    While that was then, now it is trendy (with a sharp rise since about 2015/2016) to send the kids to private schools if one can afford it. Hilariously even by politicians who favor the Gesamtschule/Stadtteilschule/Ganztagsschule concept in public.
    - verst 6y ago
      Perhaps that is a trend in big cities or among the elite, but do you have a source indicating this is generally true?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        It depends. From personal experience i only know a hand full. Then it further depends on what you mean by big city. What about any city which has social hotspots in the "Plattenbauten" social housing projects built since the 70ies? Where often the temporary housings for the refugees have been located, and then later on integrated into the already less than ideal situation in schools there. I feel like i have read hundreds of cases from all across the country confirming what i experience personally. Groups of naughty little assholes from early childhood to puberty, terrorizing and vandalizing anyone and everything. Not all of them, but many. This may look like I'd favor the AFD, or something similar. But I don't. Just watching and noticing the change in general, confirmed by the few people i personally interact with, in part heavily sobered up by what they experienced when engaging into voluntary support work for them, the feeling of entitlement some had, the rage when confronted with the not so rosy reality, and so on.
tyoma 6y ago
Several states already follow effectively this model. California is one of them: the state ensures each school district is funded based on enrollment, with some correction for poverty and English learners. Oregon is another state where schools are largely state funded. Hawaii has one school district for the whole state. Illinois and a few other states have a robin-hood like system where money is redistributed to poorer districts to meet a set baseline.
- verst 6y ago
  Then how is it San Francisco public schools are vastly underfunded? Teachers can't live anywhere near their school districts and get by on a single job. 20% of school budget comes from property taxes in California. I wonder how much it is in San Francisco.
  - tyoma 6y ago
    I don’t know if any school district in the country pays enough for a teacher to live in San Francisco. District finances are typically open and searchable, i am sure you can find out exactly how much the state pays and how San Francisco’s per pupil funding compares to other districts in California.

by verst 6y ago

dorchadas 6y ago

I'm a teacher myself, and I think this is very much needed. Right now, good neighborhoods just get better schools, while bad neighborhoods get worse. It's a horribly vicious circle, and shows even in areas where there's only one school (my county, the 5th biggest in the state, only has 25k people and one high school) if there's a huge amount of poverty (something like 65% of our students are on free or reduced lunch; over 80% live with either a single parent, grandparent(s), or other guardian), so it doesn't get the funding that, say, the school in the rich neighboorhood of the nearest big city gets, and it shows (it also doesn't help that our guidance councilor is ignorant and actively trying to make everything easier and less rigorous, but that's a different story). A state wide collection and distribution would help a lot; sadly, you're right and a lot of the parents in those better-off neighborhoods won't like it.

blueblisters 6y ago
When I moved to the US, this was one of the things that surprised me the most. I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. The fact that all kids don't get equal opportunity makes it feel like a very broken society.
- dorchadas 6y ago
  I agree. I also think it fosters a sense of anti-intellectualism in those schools that are poorer as well. I've noticed the difference in my hometown (where I now teach) in the 10 years since I've graduated. I've talked about it with another teacher who went to school there as well (I will say, that's one thing they're good at; they usually hire locals, for better or worse). My mom was a teacher there for 30 years as well, as she's seen it too. I don't live in the district I teach in, but I've already said that if I'm still teaching there (a big if) and have kids (another big if), I won't send them there if they're academically inclined. The school is routinely trying to gut AP classes in favor of "dual credit" (which is a joke) and they're removing normal accelerated classes for increased 'rigor' in others; which doesn't happen, as you get accelerated kids mixed in with kids in a collaborative class because the guidance doesn't care enough to separate them, and then we're also forced to cater to the lowest common denominator by administration as well... And "differentiated learning" just basically becomes "Oh, you're smart, here's another worksheet". It's, sadly, becoming a race to the bottom, and it's something the more wealthy schools in the area I live at wouldn't have.
- tyoma 6y ago
  While the disparity seems like its not at the same level, schools even in fairly egalitarian European countries are not all equal. For an example, see the discussion about the Amsterdam school lottery (https://medium.com/social-choice/why-a-dutch-court-stopped-high-school-students-from-exchanging-schools-1315303a48b6 https://medium.com/social-choice/why-a-dutch-court-stopped-h...).
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  >I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. It's not the schools they are looking for, it's neighborhoods where the proportion of families that have parents who are well educated and higher earning, in order to put their kids in an environment with a higher proportion of kids who have more resourceful parents. Any school with motivated kids with stable home environments will be "good schools". And since schools draw their pool of students from the neighborhood, it eventually turns into a system where parents will cluster together by income, as income determines how much of a mortgage you can afford.
- rayiner 6y ago
  That has nothing to do with school funding. Your coworkers were looking for neighborhoods where they don’t have to send their kids to school alongside black or Hispanic kids. Here in Maryland, my exurban county spends $14,400 per student per year. Baltimore spends $17,500, despite having substantially lower cost of living. (Even excluding federal funding, Baltimore spends $2,000 more.) The rich suburbs around DC spend $16,900. The rich Virginia county where I grew up, on the other side of DC, spends $15,300. DC itself spends $21,000 per student. DC also has some of the highest teacher salaries in the country. It has brand new, beautiful LEED Gold high schools your coworkers would never send their kids to because those schools are 99% black. Inside DC itself, schools are funded equally, but houses in neighborhoods districts to majority white schools cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more. (When we talk about “systemic racism” in this country, that’s what it means. It means that, even in blue states that are willing to provide ample funding to majority-minority schools, white and Asian parents would rather spend hundreds of thousands more on housing to avoid sending their kids to those well funded schools.)
verst 6y ago
I grew up in Germany and went to public schools there. I just recently became a homeowner in Seattle. I have no ties to the local schools here and would much prefer everyone got equal opportunities and education. I'd like to see people succeed in this society on merit, not privilege - this starts with education. Germany uses a decentralized system where the federal government and state government allocate budget to schools with some small additional contributions by local districts. Apparently 80% of the budget is spent on salaries. In 2016 the total education spending was 7100 Euros per student per year. This system seems to work quite well. P.S.: I was a fool for not taking advantage of free university in Germany.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  While that was then, now it is trendy (with a sharp rise since about 2015/2016) to send the kids to private schools if one can afford it. Hilariously even by politicians who favor the Gesamtschule/Stadtteilschule/Ganztagsschule concept in public.
  - verst 6y ago
    Perhaps that is a trend in big cities or among the elite, but do you have a source indicating this is generally true?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      It depends. From personal experience i only know a hand full. Then it further depends on what you mean by big city. What about any city which has social hotspots in the "Plattenbauten" social housing projects built since the 70ies? Where often the temporary housings for the refugees have been located, and then later on integrated into the already less than ideal situation in schools there. I feel like i have read hundreds of cases from all across the country confirming what i experience personally. Groups of naughty little assholes from early childhood to puberty, terrorizing and vandalizing anyone and everything. Not all of them, but many. This may look like I'd favor the AFD, or something similar. But I don't. Just watching and noticing the change in general, confirmed by the few people i personally interact with, in part heavily sobered up by what they experienced when engaging into voluntary support work for them, the feeling of entitlement some had, the rage when confronted with the not so rosy reality, and so on.

tyoma 6y ago

Several states already follow effectively this model. California is one of them: the state ensures each school district is funded based on enrollment, with some correction for poverty and English learners. Oregon is another state where schools are largely state funded. Hawaii has one school district for the whole state. Illinois and a few other states have a robin-hood like system where money is redistributed to poorer districts to meet a set baseline.

verst 6y ago
Then how is it San Francisco public schools are vastly underfunded? Teachers can't live anywhere near their school districts and get by on a single job. 20% of school budget comes from property taxes in California. I wonder how much it is in San Francisco.
- tyoma 6y ago
  I don’t know if any school district in the country pays enough for a teacher to live in San Francisco. District finances are typically open and searchable, i am sure you can find out exactly how much the state pays and how San Francisco’s per pupil funding compares to other districts in California.