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If you want relatively equal access to education and ensure minimal gap between poorer areas and wealthier areas, then there is no alternative other than a cent
by Cookingboy 5y ago
If you want relatively equal access to education and ensure minimal gap between poorer areas and wealthier areas, then there is no alternative other than a centralized education system where tax is collected federally and funding and initiatives are driven by comprehensively studying the needs of the whole country.
Just like many other things in this country, the distributed, State/local based education system simply does not scale for the 21st century.
The reason we are wasting so much money in education is despite the total cost, due to the siloed/localized system we have, we can't effectively direct funding to places that need it most. The federal government can spend tens of millions doing some "study" in why education sucks in rural schools, but it can't use a penny of that money to actually pay salaries of teachers in rural schools. In some other countries you have national programs where they pay young teachers extra to go to less desirable areas to teach, and that's just one minor examples we can learn from.
And that's not counting the whole federal budget. Just imagine how many school districts like the one from this article we can save if we just build one less Ford class aircraft carrier.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mudil 5y agoStatements like "local based education system simply does not scale for the 21st century" is a bunch of nonsense. Don't you think that children of Baltimore deserve accountability from Baltimore politicians? Who runs these schools? Republicans in Texas?
- Cookingboy 5y ago>Don't you think that children of Baltimore deserve accountability from Baltimore politicians? Nope. Education is such a complex and critical task that letting local politicians to decide the fate of our children in the hyper competitive 21st century is borderline insane. >Who runs these schools? Republicans in Texas? That's complete strawman. Most countries have non-partisan experts (i,e non-politicians) in charge of education. Just because everything is politicized and hyper-partisan in this broken country doesn't mean it's the only way going forward.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoThere's a false dichotomy here. Local control does not have to imply local funding. The funding system can migrate to the state level (I find it hard to imagine that the states would agree to an explicit federal level funding system). The control (i.e. how the money gets spent) can remain (substantially) local. What is objectionable about the current US version of "local based education" is that the funding for it depends to a very large extent on local property taxes. Have the misfortune to be a school student in a poor area, and you will probably get a worse education than someone with the good fortune to be a student in a wealthy area.
- milliondollar 5y agoI would welcome you to move to VT, which has had fully state based funding since 1996 or so. The outcome has been decidedly mixed. One clear thing that has happened is every student is getting a lot of money spent on them! (~$19k). Spending has increased substantially. There is a lot of waste. Despite losing 30% of students since that time period due to demographics, the number of teachers has actually increased. Staff to student ratio is 1:4. But performance has not changed, and has actually gone down a bit if you squint at the numbers.