6 ms·

Cool. Great. Glad it worked for you. Now, let's tax the living daylights out of everybody over USD$1M, cut the military budget and put all that money back into

Cool. Great. Glad it worked for you. Now, let's tax the living daylights out of everybody over USD$1M, cut the military budget and put all that money back into the educational system, so the rest of the kids can have the same experience as you, then re-introduce your kids to public schooling.

whatshisface 5y ago
The US already spends more on education per student than any country in the world except for Luxembourg, Austria and Norway. In postsecondary education, only Luxembourg spends more. If money (at the whole-system funding level) was the problem the problem would already be solved. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
- capableweb 5y ago
  If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind when it comes to average education compared to the rest of the world that spends less per student, you either need to spend a lot more or make sure it's effectively spent. The argument that the US already spends a lot so nothing should be done feels loose at best.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind The US education system is not there to accelerate students, to lift them up. It is model the population to suit the needs of the country. That's why nearly every aspect of a child's life revolves around school, from how and when they eat to who they socialize with. The system is there to reinforce national ideas. Some of that is noble ("try hard and get ahead") and some of it is not ("money counts"). When viewed from that perspective it works very well: little ever seems to change from one generation to the next. Freedom through social stability.
- project2501b 5y ago
  Yet, some of the neighbourhoods and districts are so grossly underfunded, teachers have to put money out of their pocket for school supplies... hmmmm
  - mbg721 5y ago
    If your plumbing is leaking so badly that you can't get anything out of the upstairs faucet, you don't just crank up the water pressure.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  I think the problem with that analysis of the problem is that education spending in the US is highly unequal. Some school districts spend much more than necessary, while some don't have the funding to afford textbooks or safe school buildings. The main cause of this is that schools are funded by local property taxes, which depend on local house values and local incomes. Poor areas can't afford good schools, which makes it harder for kids raised in those areas to escape from poverty. Consider the Corridor of Shame: http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/south-carolina-schools/ http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/south-carolina-schools/ It may well be the case that US aggregate education spending is plenty high – but unless it were centrally collected and equitably distributed (taking into account differences in cost of living, cost of real-estate, etc.) to produce equivalent average outcomes, that's not really relevant.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They've tried this with under-performing schools (typically in urban areas). Throwing money at a problem doesn't make it magically go away. What works is breaking up the school and divvying up the students/teachers among schools that aren't under-performing.
    - dwater 5y ago
      AKA dispersing concentrated poverty so that no one part of the system is overwhelmed.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    this isn't really true. the difference in funding from property tax is smoothed out (or more!) at the state level in most US states. some of the poorest school districts (eg, baltimore) have the highest funding per student. they still produce abysmal outcomes.
  - jessedhillon 5y ago
    At least in CA, and probably other liberal states, you have what is ironically called the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that distributes funding equally, more or less, and tries to erase these advantages. https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/ https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/
- greesil 5y ago
  From your source: "The total government and private expenditures on education" It's not just public school. And the data includes preschool, which is notoriously expensive.
- bena 5y ago
  The US also spends more on defense than the next 10 nations... combined. But we never talk about cutting the defense budget.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  Likely, it’s money at the parental level that is what is lacking most now, and the body of supporting research has become deafening. From benefits cliffs, to the broken poverty measure, to ballooning costs of housing, healthcare and college, to stagnant wages it’s getting harder and harder for a hard working family to maintain an existence above that of outright poverty. >When critics insist that American teachers need to be held accountable for the poor performance of American school children, the teachers shoot back that they are being held accountable for the failure of American parents and taxpayers to take care of their children. >When some of us point out that there has been no improvement in the performance of all high school students or of protected subgroups of students in the United States on NAEP measures of reading and mathematics in 30 years, they tell us we should consider ourselves lucky that we have teachers who have been able to hold student performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year. >…the U.S. spends much more per student on our schools than the countries with the best education performance. But it is also the case that other countries, with higher student performance and lower school spending per student, have smaller disparities in income between their wealthiest families and their poorest ones, and despite that, spend much more than we do on the support of families with young children on everything from child allowances to child care and early childhood education. From my vantage point, our budgets for children, families and schools, if you take everything into account, do very little about the enormous problems caused by concentrated poverty and racial segregation and then load all the problems that causes onto the schools. >…It is a whole lot cheaper to do right by our children starting when mom is pregnant than it is to wait six years, when it is a whole lot harder to do what must be done to give these kids a chance in a world in which the skill threshold for earning a decent living is getting higher and higher. -Marc Tucker https://ncee.org/2019/12/child-poverty-and-its-impact-on-education-in-the-u-s/ https://ncee.org/2019/12/child-poverty-and-its-impact-on-edu...
capableweb 5y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this makes a lot of sense. Not everyone can afford to stay home to teach their kids, because you wouldn't be able to feed them then. I agree that the education system all over the world is fucked up, but I don't advocate tearing it down, rather we should fund it better and more effectively, make sure the education people get is actually useful in the real world, not the fluff they currently teach.
- project2501b 5y ago
  $100 bucks to your favorite charity and two WaWa sandwiches says i'm getting downvoted cuz libertarians and liberals don't like the idea of re enforcing the public school system ( and the whole thing about taxing millionaires and billionaires )
  - asxd 5y ago
    What you're saying seems like a very liberal idea though, right?
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Depends where they are from. In the UK, liberals are what are called conservatives in the US, when it comes to economic stuff.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Funding is often not the problem. I believe it is Boston that currently has the third highest per-pupil funding (around $16k per student) and third worst outcomes among large school systems.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I downvoted him because it sounds totalitarian and anti-parental-choice. A power grab by a failing education system, "If only we had more money we'd do things right!" Hogwash. The industrial model of education can't be solved by throwing more money at it, and I'm suspicious of anyone who pretends there hasn't been enough money thrown already.
nemo44x 5y ago
I think we should use the money to fund students and abolish the idea of government run schools. Every kid gets the same amount to be spent at a private school that suits their child’s needs. Schools could be smaller and give students the attention they need based on their abilities and interests. The government would audit these schools to ensure kids are adequately learning. Existing government school building could be leased to private teaching organizations.
- project2501b 5y ago
  > abolish the idea of government run schools. aaah, the libertarians have arrived. i'll step on snek just fine, thanks.
- asxd 5y ago
  I know there's a difference in what you're saying, but I think this is basically the idea of charter schools.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    In essence but we haven't really gotten anywhere near having a full market economy for schooling. We have seen voucher programs in certain areas but they have also been resisted by teachers unions, possibly affecting their effectiveness. However, the longer term results of kids who received vouchers show higher graduation rates and college admissions, albeit not always and and generally mild. But there's also evidence that voucher programs have improved public schools as they face competition. I think we if we really committed to it and abolished government schools then we would see market based schooling improve the quality of education across the board. We could also expand what "qualified education" means and get away from a single standardized test for math, english, etc and begin to assist kids in placing them into academies that will benefit them. For example, by 14 it might make sense to have schools that focus less on academics and more on trade skills. Kids could begin to learn useful skills like carpentry, plumbing, small business operations, etc. that give them a real chance at building a life for themselves. A free market of education would allow people to setup these types of schools and for parents and kids to choose to place into them to set themselves up for success in life. We can't do this in today's monolithic public school system. We have essentially a one-sized fits all approach with some schools offering AP classes, although even those are being removed in the name of "equity". Putting all our kids into the same system with the same goal of competing with each other to get into the best universities isn't good for most people.
nateabele 5y ago
No amount of money will ever cure the problem because the stated goal of the system is almost the exact opposite of its actual intent. I highly recommend Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto, a 3-time New York State teacher of the year, which presents a detailed analysis of this.
jessedhillon 5y ago
First off, because of Bloom's two sigma effect [0], public schools will never be able to match the experience of a good homeschool. Unless you're talking about class sizes of four, each headed by someone who has mastered the material, the level of achievement possible under homeschooling will, in general, vastly outstrip what a public school offers. Second, you can't talk about school funding unless you talk about both administrative bloat and teacher's unions. As long as teachers can keep voting themselves raises and escaping even the most basic levels of accountability for their results, money will not solve the public school crises. And administrative employment has grown by 75% over less than a decade -- 10x the growth in teacher employment during the same time. [1] So sure, you solve the bloat and local control issues, there's plenty of money for instruction and classroom resources. 0: https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/ https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/ 1: https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-assistant-principals-far-outpaces-teacher-hiring/ https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-as...

whatshisface 5y ago

The US already spends more on education per student than any country in the world except for Luxembourg, Austria and Norway. In postsecondary education, only Luxembourg spends more. If money (at the whole-system funding level) was the problem the problem would already be solved. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

capableweb 5y ago
If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind when it comes to average education compared to the rest of the world that spends less per student, you either need to spend a lot more or make sure it's effectively spent. The argument that the US already spends a lot so nothing should be done feels loose at best.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> If the US is inefficient that people are still very far behind The US education system is not there to accelerate students, to lift them up. It is model the population to suit the needs of the country. That's why nearly every aspect of a child's life revolves around school, from how and when they eat to who they socialize with. The system is there to reinforce national ideas. Some of that is noble ("try hard and get ahead") and some of it is not ("money counts"). When viewed from that perspective it works very well: little ever seems to change from one generation to the next. Freedom through social stability.
project2501b 5y ago
Yet, some of the neighbourhoods and districts are so grossly underfunded, teachers have to put money out of their pocket for school supplies... hmmmm
- mbg721 5y ago
  If your plumbing is leaking so badly that you can't get anything out of the upstairs faucet, you don't just crank up the water pressure.
NoGravitas 5y ago
I think the problem with that analysis of the problem is that education spending in the US is highly unequal. Some school districts spend much more than necessary, while some don't have the funding to afford textbooks or safe school buildings. The main cause of this is that schools are funded by local property taxes, which depend on local house values and local incomes. Poor areas can't afford good schools, which makes it harder for kids raised in those areas to escape from poverty. Consider the Corridor of Shame: http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/south-carolina-schools/ http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/south-carolina-schools/ It may well be the case that US aggregate education spending is plenty high – but unless it were centrally collected and equitably distributed (taking into account differences in cost of living, cost of real-estate, etc.) to produce equivalent average outcomes, that's not really relevant.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They've tried this with under-performing schools (typically in urban areas). Throwing money at a problem doesn't make it magically go away. What works is breaking up the school and divvying up the students/teachers among schools that aren't under-performing.
  - dwater 5y ago
    AKA dispersing concentrated poverty so that no one part of the system is overwhelmed.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  this isn't really true. the difference in funding from property tax is smoothed out (or more!) at the state level in most US states. some of the poorest school districts (eg, baltimore) have the highest funding per student. they still produce abysmal outcomes.
- jessedhillon 5y ago
  At least in CA, and probably other liberal states, you have what is ironically called the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that distributes funding equally, more or less, and tries to erase these advantages. https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/ https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/
greesil 5y ago
From your source: "The total government and private expenditures on education" It's not just public school. And the data includes preschool, which is notoriously expensive.
bena 5y ago
The US also spends more on defense than the next 10 nations... combined. But we never talk about cutting the defense budget.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
Likely, it’s money at the parental level that is what is lacking most now, and the body of supporting research has become deafening. From benefits cliffs, to the broken poverty measure, to ballooning costs of housing, healthcare and college, to stagnant wages it’s getting harder and harder for a hard working family to maintain an existence above that of outright poverty. >When critics insist that American teachers need to be held accountable for the poor performance of American school children, the teachers shoot back that they are being held accountable for the failure of American parents and taxpayers to take care of their children. >When some of us point out that there has been no improvement in the performance of all high school students or of protected subgroups of students in the United States on NAEP measures of reading and mathematics in 30 years, they tell us we should consider ourselves lucky that we have teachers who have been able to hold student performance steady while the American people have been sending them students who get poorer and more isolated every year. >…the U.S. spends much more per student on our schools than the countries with the best education performance. But it is also the case that other countries, with higher student performance and lower school spending per student, have smaller disparities in income between their wealthiest families and their poorest ones, and despite that, spend much more than we do on the support of families with young children on everything from child allowances to child care and early childhood education. From my vantage point, our budgets for children, families and schools, if you take everything into account, do very little about the enormous problems caused by concentrated poverty and racial segregation and then load all the problems that causes onto the schools. >…It is a whole lot cheaper to do right by our children starting when mom is pregnant than it is to wait six years, when it is a whole lot harder to do what must be done to give these kids a chance in a world in which the skill threshold for earning a decent living is getting higher and higher. -Marc Tucker https://ncee.org/2019/12/child-poverty-and-its-impact-on-education-in-the-u-s/ https://ncee.org/2019/12/child-poverty-and-its-impact-on-edu...

capableweb 5y ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this makes a lot of sense. Not everyone can afford to stay home to teach their kids, because you wouldn't be able to feed them then. I agree that the education system all over the world is fucked up, but I don't advocate tearing it down, rather we should fund it better and more effectively, make sure the education people get is actually useful in the real world, not the fluff they currently teach.

project2501b 5y ago
$100 bucks to your favorite charity and two WaWa sandwiches says i'm getting downvoted cuz libertarians and liberals don't like the idea of re enforcing the public school system ( and the whole thing about taxing millionaires and billionaires )
- asxd 5y ago
  What you're saying seems like a very liberal idea though, right?
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Depends where they are from. In the UK, liberals are what are called conservatives in the US, when it comes to economic stuff.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Funding is often not the problem. I believe it is Boston that currently has the third highest per-pupil funding (around $16k per student) and third worst outcomes among large school systems.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I downvoted him because it sounds totalitarian and anti-parental-choice. A power grab by a failing education system, "If only we had more money we'd do things right!" Hogwash. The industrial model of education can't be solved by throwing more money at it, and I'm suspicious of anyone who pretends there hasn't been enough money thrown already.

nemo44x 5y ago

I think we should use the money to fund students and abolish the idea of government run schools. Every kid gets the same amount to be spent at a private school that suits their child’s needs. Schools could be smaller and give students the attention they need based on their abilities and interests. The government would audit these schools to ensure kids are adequately learning. Existing government school building could be leased to private teaching organizations.

project2501b 5y ago
> abolish the idea of government run schools. aaah, the libertarians have arrived. i'll step on snek just fine, thanks.
asxd 5y ago
I know there's a difference in what you're saying, but I think this is basically the idea of charter schools.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  In essence but we haven't really gotten anywhere near having a full market economy for schooling. We have seen voucher programs in certain areas but they have also been resisted by teachers unions, possibly affecting their effectiveness. However, the longer term results of kids who received vouchers show higher graduation rates and college admissions, albeit not always and and generally mild. But there's also evidence that voucher programs have improved public schools as they face competition. I think we if we really committed to it and abolished government schools then we would see market based schooling improve the quality of education across the board. We could also expand what "qualified education" means and get away from a single standardized test for math, english, etc and begin to assist kids in placing them into academies that will benefit them. For example, by 14 it might make sense to have schools that focus less on academics and more on trade skills. Kids could begin to learn useful skills like carpentry, plumbing, small business operations, etc. that give them a real chance at building a life for themselves. A free market of education would allow people to setup these types of schools and for parents and kids to choose to place into them to set themselves up for success in life. We can't do this in today's monolithic public school system. We have essentially a one-sized fits all approach with some schools offering AP classes, although even those are being removed in the name of "equity". Putting all our kids into the same system with the same goal of competing with each other to get into the best universities isn't good for most people.

nateabele 5y ago

No amount of money will ever cure the problem because the stated goal of the system is almost the exact opposite of its actual intent. I highly recommend Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto, a 3-time New York State teacher of the year, which presents a detailed analysis of this.

jessedhillon 5y ago

First off, because of Bloom's two sigma effect [0], public schools will never be able to match the experience of a good homeschool. Unless you're talking about class sizes of four, each headed by someone who has mastered the material, the level of achievement possible under homeschooling will, in general, vastly outstrip what a public school offers. Second, you can't talk about school funding unless you talk about both administrative bloat and teacher's unions. As long as teachers can keep voting themselves raises and escaping even the most basic levels of accountability for their results, money will not solve the public school crises. And administrative employment has grown by 75% over less than a decade -- 10x the growth in teacher employment during the same time. [1] So sure, you solve the bloat and local control issues, there's plenty of money for instruction and classroom resources. 0: https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/ https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/ 1: https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-assistant-principals-far-outpaces-teacher-hiring/ https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-as...