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> When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that muc

> When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. What countries fund education better per capita than the US? Can you give numbers? According to various sources, for example https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp , US per-student K-12 education funding is only behind four OECD countries: Switzerland, Austria, and Norway (and far behind Luxembourg, which is an outlier). The US is ahead of highly developed peer countries like Ireland and Belgium, and *way* ahead of the OECD average. Meta-point: It irritates me when people assume the problem with US education is low spending, because the US education system is obviously so bad that that must be true, when in reality the problem is much more complex. In my experience the people who believe this never have numbers at hand; they are just shooting from the hip.

YarickR2 6y ago
Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education, details matter. Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation do nothing to increase quality of schooling compared to countries where all those measures are unnecessary (safe urban environments with parents able to feed kids by themselves)
- umanwizard 6y ago
  > Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education Right. Are you agreeing with me? Is this not my entire point? > Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation Any numbers on what fraction of school budgets these typically are?
  - krapht 6y ago
    I can't be bothered to break out Excel to tally up the numbers, but here's a link to a typical suburban school district budget if you want to run the numbers yourself: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Superintendents-Proposed-Budget_final.pdf https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Supe...
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  But if not spending, how else could "the country" care about the children? Or you're saying that no amount of money can replace a caring parent?
vesinisa 6y ago
To me, this fact makes it even more shocking how bad the US public education system is. How can it so effectively continue to fail to provide social mobility at scale? Where is all this money being spent? Not at least on teachers' salaries, I guess?
- kaesar14 6y ago
  I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to cost of living (75k+ USD) and supplies were never lacking. Spectacular outcomes for most students provided a stable home environment (92% of students going on to college). The US public educational system isn't bad, it isn't good, it's nonexistant. It's a conglomeration of dozens of educational systems receiving some amount of money from the Federal government but more or less operating on their own. Given that, what we should be asking is what are we failing to provide our students outside of classrooms.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I am willing to agree for the most part. My observations are mostly from CPS in Chicago-land so take that into consideration. The issue, and a glaring one at that, is that no one with money will let their kid go to public school if they can help it regardless of official political positions they hold, which tells you something. To me that says that for those schools, education is not the goal. Naturally, it is not all their fault. There are sorts of issues that are socio-economic in nature ( how much time a parent can devote to reading aloud to a child? can they hire a tutor? ). I don't think I completely agree that we should focus on external factors only ( although we should look into them ). I am saying we should understand where that money disappears into. My house taxes are ridiculous and the statement I get suggests its mostly for schools. Where exactly is it going if it is not having appropriate results?
  - vesinisa 6y ago
yc-kraln 6y ago
US Averages for school funding are completely worthless because schools are funded with property taxes; i.e. wealthy areas have amazingly well funded schools while poor areas have underfunded, overcrowded nightmares.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No that’s not true. Only 50% of school funding comes from property taxes. The rest comes from federal and state sources that make up the gaps in property tax revenues. More states have progressive school funding (poor areas get more) than the opposite. (In the vast majority it’s +/- 5%.) This is why liberal think tanks have shifted the goal posts to “equitable funding”: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school-funding-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school... (“ Someone expecting to find widespread evidence of “savage inequalities” will be pleasantly surprised to learn that, on average, poor students attend schools that are at least as well-funded as their more advantaged peers... But there are good reasons to believe that it is more expensive to provide the same quality of education to disadvantaged children—in other words, funding that is equal may not be equitable.“). Which, to be fair, I don’t think is a flawed idea. If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap, we can have the conversation that poor kids actually need more money to even out inequalities.
  - sarakayakomzin 6y ago
    >Only 50% of school funding comes from property taxes. >If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap pick one?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The states and feds pour money into the "bad" districts. But they never get better for a lot of the same reasons real mechanics don't work at jiffy lube and real chiropractors don't work for borderline insurance billing scams. Good teachers are and administrators are only in for a few years before they're up and out and there's all sorts of perverse incentives to just do the minimum while punching the clock.

YarickR2 6y ago

Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education, details matter. Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation do nothing to increase quality of schooling compared to countries where all those measures are unnecessary (safe urban environments with parents able to feed kids by themselves)

umanwizard 6y ago
> Spending in general is not a universal or meaningful metric to measure quality of education Right. Are you agreeing with me? Is this not my entire point? > Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation Any numbers on what fraction of school budgets these typically are?
- krapht 6y ago
  I can't be bothered to break out Excel to tally up the numbers, but here's a link to a typical suburban school district budget if you want to run the numbers yourself: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Superintendents-Proposed-Budget_final.pdf https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Supe...
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
But if not spending, how else could "the country" care about the children? Or you're saying that no amount of money can replace a caring parent?

vesinisa 6y ago

To me, this fact makes it even more shocking how bad the US public education system is. How can it so effectively continue to fail to provide social mobility at scale? Where is all this money being spent? Not at least on teachers' salaries, I guess?

kaesar14 6y ago
I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to cost of living (75k+ USD) and supplies were never lacking. Spectacular outcomes for most students provided a stable home environment (92% of students going on to college). The US public educational system isn't bad, it isn't good, it's nonexistant. It's a conglomeration of dozens of educational systems receiving some amount of money from the Federal government but more or less operating on their own. Given that, what we should be asking is what are we failing to provide our students outside of classrooms.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I am willing to agree for the most part. My observations are mostly from CPS in Chicago-land so take that into consideration. The issue, and a glaring one at that, is that no one with money will let their kid go to public school if they can help it regardless of official political positions they hold, which tells you something. To me that says that for those schools, education is not the goal. Naturally, it is not all their fault. There are sorts of issues that are socio-economic in nature ( how much time a parent can devote to reading aloud to a child? can they hire a tutor? ). I don't think I completely agree that we should focus on external factors only ( although we should look into them ). I am saying we should understand where that money disappears into. My house taxes are ridiculous and the statement I get suggests its mostly for schools. Where exactly is it going if it is not having appropriate results?
- vesinisa 6y ago

yc-kraln 6y ago

US Averages for school funding are completely worthless because schools are funded with property taxes; i.e. wealthy areas have amazingly well funded schools while poor areas have underfunded, overcrowded nightmares.

rayiner 6y ago
No that’s not true. Only 50% of school funding comes from property taxes. The rest comes from federal and state sources that make up the gaps in property tax revenues. More states have progressive school funding (poor areas get more) than the opposite. (In the vast majority it’s +/- 5%.) This is why liberal think tanks have shifted the goal posts to “equitable funding”: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school-funding-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school... (“ Someone expecting to find widespread evidence of “savage inequalities” will be pleasantly surprised to learn that, on average, poor students attend schools that are at least as well-funded as their more advantaged peers... But there are good reasons to believe that it is more expensive to provide the same quality of education to disadvantaged children—in other words, funding that is equal may not be equitable.“). Which, to be fair, I don’t think is a flawed idea. If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap, we can have the conversation that poor kids actually need more money to even out inequalities.
- sarakayakomzin 6y ago
  >Only 50% of school funding comes from property taxes. >If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap pick one?
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The states and feds pour money into the "bad" districts. But they never get better for a lot of the same reasons real mechanics don't work at jiffy lube and real chiropractors don't work for borderline insurance billing scams. Good teachers are and administrators are only in for a few years before they're up and out and there's all sorts of perverse incentives to just do the minimum while punching the clock.