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There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays without getting into politics but politics and structural inequality are at the core of this. For

• mrexroad 4y ago
  I’ve always quipped that the idea that the highest property taxes fund the poorest areas, and vice-versa. While not feasible, the current situation is absurd.
  • toyg 4y ago
    > While not feasible Well, that's effectively what happens in European systems, where schooling is basically run entirely by the State and funding is mostly distributed on a per-pupil basis - higher-income taxpayers effectively subsidize poorer areas. So it is, in fact, feasible. But Americans would probably call that illiberal or something.
    • singlow 4y ago
      That is what Texas does. Not 100 percent, but a majority of tax dollars for schools are paid to the state and redistributed to the districts based on attendance/enrollment. Rich areas might be able to use extra funds/donations for capital expenditures like fancier buildings or stadiums, but the tax money at largely redistributed.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > But Americans would probably call that illiberal or something. Most Americans would call that pretty much how things actually happen here, too.
  • genedan 4y ago
    Where I grew up in Texas, this was called the Robinhood Plan where rich districts sent money to poor ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_plan
    • mrexroad 4y ago
      Fascinating, I had no idea.
• jayd16 4y ago
  In California a large percentage is state income tax not property taxes.
  • abfan1127 4y ago
    In Arizona, all school funding is from the state. Then local school districts can pass school overrides via voting which then can be additional property tax in their district. Richer areas tend to have more parent involvement (both time and financially). AZ also has open enrollment which means you can enroll your child in any public school, not just your district assignment.
• cyberlurker 4y ago
  In NYC they also flatten all Asians into one group and say the “gifted” programs aren't diverse enough because a high percentage are Asian. As if implying Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. all have the same life experience, cultures, advantages, disadvantages… Also you nailed it on the property tax point. Often overlooked as the biggest issue with education. A similar sized home in a good school district can be 2 or 3x as expensive as one in a mediocre school district. Edit: when talking about property tax, I am referring to most suburbs, not NYC. Seems like a lot of people are posting evidence that the property tax point is correlated with better schools but the funding difference is made up for by the stare and federal government. Interesting.
  • jb12 4y ago
    More than that, they also lump "Pacific Islanders" into the same category as "Asian", as if the Pacific Islands aren't on an entirely different continent.
  • kingnothing 4y ago
    By that same logic, they also flatten all Whites, Blacks, and Latinos into their own groups as well, even though all are comprised of people from many different countries and cultures.
    • yieldcrv 4y ago
      I think the Asian and Pacific Islander one is interesting because it lacks a shared history of strife to support the amorphous grouping. (Latino should also be treated very differently, this post is about Asian-American and Asians in America) Asian-American, especially in New York City (but somewhat replicated across the nation), is kind of a burgeoning identity which has now somewhat of a shared distinctly American culture, but is only kind of a self-fulfilling identity because everyone pigeonholes them, domestically and wherever their heritage was from. This makes individuals forced to attempt a shared representation. But it makes less sense compared to "white", "black" and pre-colonial civilizations here, given the lower population and the large time gaps in migration waves, and the large difference in why people migrated to the US at all during those migration waves.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  I've never been convinced that more money for schools produces better results. Sure, that means nicer buildings, but how does that improve education? In Washington State, the teachers finally got their "fully funding" proposal enacted, which was supposed to solve all the funding problems, including big raises for teachers. There's been zero change in results.
  • mymllnthaccount 4y ago
    It's so funny to me that people treat businesses and government so differently. Want results from your start up? Find someone to invest in it. Want results from a government program? Well, we need to cut out all the wasteful spending.
    • ouid 4y ago
      Cutting out wasteful spending may make your shitty schools cheaper, but it will not make them better.
      • bluGill 4y ago
        But it may free up money for things that will make the schools better. Maybe, it is easy to see a problem, hard to fix it. If nothing else a tax break (even if it is only a few cents per resident) is a better use than some programs
        • jfk13 4y ago
          > a tax break (even if it is only a few cents per resident) is a better use than some programs Very likely so, but which programs exactly? (Are you uniquely well-qualified to make that determination? If not, who is, and how can we know that?)
          • bluGill 4y ago
            That is an excellent question. I carefully did not answer it because as soon as I do, no matter how wasteful and useless the program someone will come to defend it and I don't want to get in that fight.
• cglong 4y ago
  As an American, how is this problem avoided in other countries?
  • Aardwolf 4y ago
    School funding isn't as much determined by local property taxes, but larger scale
  • mynegation 4y ago
    Schools are funded by a State or Federation member (eg provinces and territories in Canada). Gifted programs just exist. In that sense - yes - rich areas subsidize less fortunate areas.
  • anthonyshort 4y ago
    Australian public schools are funded by state and federal governments, not local. So all public schools tend to be pretty similar. On the flip side the government also partially funds private schools, which is an issue at the moment. https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-schools-package/fact-sheets/how-are-schools-funded-australia https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-schools-package/fact-sheets/...
  • pvg 4y ago
    Not necessarily a universal recipe for avoiding this problem but public education standards, curricula, funding, etc tends to be more centralized at a national level in many countries. It's much more decentralized in the US with many more points of friction for competing interests.
  • yodsanklai 4y ago
    In France, the problem isn't avoided. Public schools are roughly the same everywhere in term of resources and quality of teacher. But for the most part, kids go to a school near their home, and if they live in a rich area, they'll have better studying conditions than if they live in a poor area. It seems the government is always trying to improve this situation with very little success.
  • tremon 4y ago
    I don't really know many details as I've only ever interacted with the school system here as a pupil, but I think the three major differences between here (NL) and the USA are: Firstly, by not having extreme poverty. You can't solve at school the problems that exist at home. We have adequate housing and benefits systems, and a minimum wage that people can actually live on. In addition, we have local intervention teams (and budgets) that try to fix problems that children encounter in their home situations (such as violence, substance abuse, etc). Secondly, by banning private schools: all schools are funded directly by the government based on number of pupils. This makes sure that the rich don't withdraw their children from society, and thus makes sure they have a stake in public education. Thirdly, by investing heavily in teachers' education. Many teachers here have two degrees: one in their teaching subject, and one in pedagogy or psychology. That said, I've heard many people say that our education system isn't what it used to be either, mainly because of two changes: - a decade or so ago the government closed all special-needs schools (or at least the majority) and moved those children into the general school population. This put a lot of strain on the teachers, because they now had to deal not just with slow learners, but also children with learning disabilities and often behavioural problems. This put a lot of stress especially on the lower end of the spectrum. - the recent appearance of many after-school tutoring programs. Since these are privately funded and operated, they bring a touch of the US' problems: since the rich now have a way to focus their money on only their own offspring, inequality in school achievements is rising.
• jylam 4y ago
  "There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays without getting into politics" I suppose everyone says that since politics exist. Life in a society is politics, that's the very definition of the word. Politics is not a bad word or something to avoid, stop being afraid talking politics. The less you talk about politics, the more others do it for you.
• car_analogy 4y ago
  > how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property. But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes, school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets, in inverse proportion to property taxes, so that racial differences in per-pupil funding are negligible: on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724... That's a ~$200 difference compared to $6000 per pupil, the 4th highest in the world: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Spending-per-primary-school-student https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Sp...
  • willcipriano 4y ago
    I've taken a close look at the numbers for individual schools in my tri-state area, (NY, NJ, PA) and from my estimate it seems that lower performing schools far and away have the highest per student budgets.
    • danans 4y ago
      It is much more expensive to teach and support the children at lower performing schools than it is at higher performing schools. Lower performing schools are also providing significant front line social support services for the communities they serve, including food, trauma counseling, sometimes medical intervention, extreme behavior management. None of that is cheap. Students/families at higher performing schools have far lower need for support systems.
      • zozbot234 4y ago
        > It is much more expensive to teach and support the children at lower performing schools Blame education schools and their failing "every student can simply learn their math on their own!" approach. Total self-serving garbage, devised to cater to the ego of naïve prospective teachers and their expectation of not doing any real teaching work.
• jdminhbg 4y ago
  > For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property. This is widely believed but no longer true. Federal and state funding have eclipsed local funding[0], and those funds are highly progressive. As a result, the highest-spending per capita schools are a mix of wealthy suburbs and failing urban districts. See this map[1] for examples, like the Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion and the NJ city of Camden. 0: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-funding-of-public-schools https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-f... 1: https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-the-money-they-spend-per-student/ https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-th...
• brianwawok 4y ago
  The property tax leading to funding differences is part of the puzzle, but not all of the puzzle. In my random neck of the world we have roughly 4 school districts. 1) Public school 1. Covers most of the black and brown students of the area. 2) Public school 2. Covers most of the lower to middle class white students of the area. 3) Public school 3. Covers most of the higher class white students, especially families of a local high ranking private college. 4) Various private schools. Options 1-2-3 have pretty much open enrollment, you can send your kid to any of them even if they are out of district, it just means you need to drive them (they won't qualify for bussing service). If you look at public school 1, 2, and 3 - they have near identical spending per pupil. yes property taxes differ a little, but at the end of the day they are spending the same $ per pupil. However the test scores are vastly different. Test scores highly corelate with the % of students receiving free lunch, a fairly accurate proxy for poverty. The more kids in poverty, the worse test scores. But because of this, many high achieving students that have money, are sent to option 4. Since this is the best education, if you can choose anything - you do this. The next bucket of high achieving but wanting to save money send their kids to public school 3. It's reguarded as a "very good" free education. But this means the best kids are pulled out of the disticts for schools 1 and 2. Schools 1 and 2 mostly just the people who are "left" in the district, without the inclination or money to go to choise 3 or 4.
  • brewdad 4y ago
    Even when you have poorer families who value the better education their children could receive at option 3, the transportation hurdle can be huge. Often they may lack reliable transportation of their own or work at a job or jobs that don't offer the kind of flexibility in the workday that white-collar workers tend to have.
    • brianwawok 4y ago
      Yes for sure. You know who can easily transport their kids 30 mins to another school? Rich, stay at home moms. You know who can't transport their kids 30 mins to another school? A single mom working 2 jobs.
    • 4y ago
• smsm42 4y ago
  It's a hard topic, and it certainly is not made easier by repeating old cliches that has been proven false repeatedly. Throwing money at bad schools does not make them good. There are plenty of terrible schools spending as much money as the best ones, with no results. It's not a money question - at least not alone. Yes, there are correlation between academic success and living in a rich neighborhood. Because yes, rich successful people often pass on their success to their children. But it's not solved by just dumping money on poor schools and hoping that would solve everything. It has been tried. Unions love it. Kids don't get any better. In fact, the whole "structural inequality" thing was roped in to explain this phenomenon - why tons of money are being spent with no observable result? Oh, it must be the invisible and immeasurable "structural inequality"! Which means we should shut down the gifted programs (so rare students that manage to overcome the awfulness of their schools have no recourse now), introduce race-based school policies and let students that barely can (and sometimes can't) read graduate. That surely will make them successful.
  • scarmig 4y ago
    And, perhaps most unfortunately, it's schools in poor and disproportionately minority communities that are axing algebra and gifted programs in the name of equity, while schools serving children from more privileged backgrounds continue to offer them.
• blatherard 4y ago
  I'll add some additional color to the funding "uniqueness". At least in NYC, there are Parent-Teacher Associations that are private organizations that raise money for specific schools. These PTAs are, themselves, a great source of inequality within the public schools. For extreme examples the PTA at PS 87, an elementary school in the Upper West Side raised 2 million dollars in 2019 (the last number I could find numbers for) [1]; our son's school (also in the UWS, where we live) raised a little shy of 1 million that same year, via an annual campaign, auction fund-raiser, and a few other events. This money is used for many things, like capital improvements and enhanced services. At our son's school this was used to upgrade air conditioning in the building, pay for extra teaching assistants, and fund a library and librarian, amongst other things. Numerous schools have no PTA fund-raising at all or raise a few thousand dollars, because they serve less-affluent areas. This kind of inequality is vexing because there isn't any taxing going on, just very active parent bases with money to give. -- [1] https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2019/12/2/21113658/find-out-how-much-your-school-s-pta-raises-or-doesn-t https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2019/12/2/21113658/find-out-how-muc...
  • skyde 4y ago
    is "PS 87 elementary school" a public school of private school ?
    • yig 4y ago
      Public School
• Alex3917 4y ago
  > But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. Poorer districts tend to have more industrial properties, so they are often better funded than wealthier districts. Especially since most state funding is distributed based on pupil units rather than pupils, and a low-SES student might count as something like 1.5 pupil units. (And a disabled student might count as 2.0 pupil units, etc.)
• onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  I can't help being reminded of Harrison Bergeron.
• tzs 4y ago
  > Twenty years ago Bush (43) passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which many dubbed the No Child Gets Ahead Act. A lot of this was also in the name of "equity". That was a very bipartisan bill. It was coauthored by Ted Kennedy, passed in the House 381-41, and passed in the Senate 87-10.
• tootie 4y ago
  This is closer to the core of the problem and honestly it goes even deeper. We very frequently look at poor outcomes when it comes to things like education and employment and then scream at schools or companies for not supporting equity. And not to let them all completely off the hook because they have absolutely been part of the problem, but the roots of this stuff go way deeper. Trying to find diverse candidates for knowledge jobs is made harder when there are fewer diverse candidates graduating from good colleges because fewer diverse students are getting into gifted programs because diverse children are raised in neighborhoods with fewer resources and on and on. We still have so much culturally ingrained bias that we can't update policy to set the stage for even the next few generations to close these gaps. And it's compounded by the current generation being asked to pay an unreasonable price (ie disappearing gifted classes) to put a band-aid on this gunshot wound of a problem which breeds resentment which sets progress back even further.
• adam_arthur 4y ago
  Education funding has very little to do with outcomes. Your peers and culture of their family matters most, which will also correlate with wealth/income levels. But it's correlation, not causation. There was a complete test case of this in NJ a few years ago where a poorly funded school got a huge amount of extra funding as a result of a lawsuit, and it made 0 statistical difference to outcomes years down the line. They did a study on it. https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-his... If you're surrounded by people who care and aim to excel, you'll probably care. And vice versa. In that sense, forced integration is an unethical but probably effective way of homogenizing educational results. I think Singapore actually forces some cultural integration like this with demographic requirements per neighborhood block/district. New York somewhat achieves this incidentally via their "affordable housing" being attached to expensive unit buildings, but most wealthy new yorkers send to private, so doesn't fix the cultural balance in public system.
• masklinn 4y ago
  > How does that help anyone? It doesn't, in ways which are eerily reminiscent of America's falling out of love with public parks and pools. Which completely coincidentally followed their desegregation.
• hash07e 4y ago
  There is a darker Truth. Intelligence as tested by IQ by several govts and organizations is mostly genetic[1]. It means that the "nurture" part is not so much important as people think. Heck you can even see with brothers / cousins the differences. When we say "gifted" it means we are selecting and optimizing for IQ. Thus the "inequality". You will always see more Asians. To make more equal we need to remove/disqualify asians. If a profession/skill is very related to a characteristic/feature as IQ then I want the best there. Not everyone is equal and not everyone has the same skills. If you check [1] you will see they studied TWINS adopted in families. There is no better "social intervention" than adopting someone, provide the same food/structure that all on family have. Then you can see here the confirmation in a soft way [2] and [3]. "and we consistently find that considering performance on the SAT/ACT, particularly the math section, substantially improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect to subsequent student success at the Institute." I am not gifted but I do benefit from gifted people work. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289621000635 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... [2] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-our-sat-act-requirement-for-the-2021-2022-application-cycle-as-well/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-our-... [3] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...
• macspoofing 4y ago
  >But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of improving property values by having better schools and thus generating more tax revenue and so on. No. This is a complete red-herring. Every school in the US is good enough to provide quality education. Every school in the US is staffed by good, well-trained teachers. Every child gets free textbooks, notebooks, pens, pencils, paper, etc (which isn't as common in the world as you'd think). Sometimes free breakfast or lunch is provided as well. That some school district provides high-end iPads and another doesn't makes no material difference to a quality education. That some parents want to optimize their child's education by sending them to another district, makes no material difference to a quality education. Put another way, we're dealing with kids graduating being functionally illiterate - and that problem does not stem from school or teacher quality. That's a parent problem (as in, what kind of a parent allows their child to not be able to read by the time they are ready to graduate).
  • scarmig 4y ago
    > Every school in the US is staffed by good, well-trained teachers Unfortunately, this really isn't the case. There are many good teachers, and most teachers are genuinely passionate, hard workers. But many teachers get into teaching not because of a mastery of their subject matter or even teaching but because they want to be paid babysitters, more or less. E.g. in Canada, which has similar issues, Ontario recently axed its math certification test for public school teachers because too many teachers were failing it and because it had "a disproportionate adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates." And, for demonstrative purposes, a sample test that prospective teachers were failing: https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions/1 https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions/1 But there's not an easy solution. ~25% of test takers were failing it (and more for "racialized" candidates), and most people don't want to become teachers because it's a terrible work environment.
    • macspoofing 4y ago
      >But many teachers get into teaching not because of a mastery of their subject matter or even teaching but because they want to be paid babysitters, more or less. You're missing the forest for the trees. We're graduating kids who are functionally illiterate. That isn't a teacher problem. That isn't a school problem.
• eric_b 4y ago
  In Minnesota anyways, the schools in lower-income areas get more money per pupil than the "good area" schools. In some cases dramatically more. For example, the high school in north Minneapolis (a not-good part of town) get's $20k per student. Whereas the southwest Minneapolis high school (nice area) gets 13k. This is common across all grades. So the disadvantaged area schools get 35%+ more money per pupil, and the outcomes keep getting worse. And the politicians keep doubling down on the same policies and wonder why things aren't changing. Money isn't everything, or apparently even most things. What a mess.
• ge96 4y ago
  Didn't think about this much until later. The town I went to high school in they had two high schools about 2 miles apart and one had more minorities than the other (as in 80% vs. 20%) and yeah the former was poorer than the latter.
• bnralt 4y ago
  > But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of improving property values by having better schools and thus generating more tax revenue and so on. I say "vicious" because it is absolutely exclusionary to lower-income people who cannot possibly afford to live in these areas. And that's by design. That's not really true. You can look at the per pupil spending in places like Washington, D.C. or Baltimore and they're well above the U.S. average (D.C. is one of the top spenders in the nation). A city's public school system sometimes largely serves lower income students even if it has a number of high earners in its tax base (urban yuppies with no kids, wealthy people who send their kids to private schools, etc. all paying into the system without adding to the load). If we look at funding levels vs. outcomes, we can see many of the best funded school systems struggling. That's because school is a complex problem that doesn't simply get solved by more funding.
• giantg2 4y ago
  "But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools." This is largely a lie. It works like this in some states but not most. Most states, and the federal government allocate their funds in a way that balances that out by allocating more money to the poorer districts. In my state, the various quartiles recieve essentially the same overall funding (19k-20k per student).
• killjoywashere 4y ago
  > wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools This is not the issue. The real issue is that some wealthier localities defund their public school system through anti-taxation measures and the wealthy send their kids to thriving (well funded, large student population) private schools and those who can't afford the private school tuition (rivals private college tuition) are stuck with either parochial schools (middle class families, associated with their church) or public schools (poor kids, who graduate functionally illiterate if at all). Tier 1: private school kids, whose parents control the local government and economy Tier 2: middle class sending their kids to Christian schools where they can learn why the order of things is the way it is through divine writ Tier 3: public schools, radically underfunded, basically holding cells.
  • thepasswordis 4y ago
    Well why do you think those rich people are sending their kids to private schools? Getting rid of gifted programs obviously makes the public school worse. Do people think that the wealthy are simply going to throw their hands up and say "Welp, guess my kid is getting a shitty education!"? Make the public schools good again.
• 0xBombadilo 4y ago
  Except most of the money gets taken by robinhood.
• paulcole 4y ago
  > which many dubbed the No Child Gets Ahead Act. This is a good example of why Wikipedia doesn't allow this kind of statement. If you google this phrase, "No Child Gets Ahead Act", you get 4 pages of results ("About 84 results", which I don't know if I would call "many" in a country of 300 million plus people.
• robocat 4y ago
  The same thing occurs in New Zealand, even though most schools are funded by the government (property taxes don’t pay for schools). The government also tries to help poor students by boosting funding for schools that have poor parents. Schools are ranked into 10 deciles[3] depending on the income of the parents, with an equal number of schools in each decile. The government gives out more funding to schools with poor parents (decile 1), and less funding to schools with rich parents (decile 10). The academic results of students are strongly correlated with how well-off their parents are[1]. Attendance and other factors are correlated as well[2]. [1] https://keithwoodford.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/socio-economic-conditions-determine-educational-under-achievement/ https://keithwoodford.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/socio-economi... [2] https://figure.nz/search/?query=Deciles https://figure.nz/search/?query=Deciles [3] https://www.education.govt.nz/school/funding-and-financials/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/ https://www.education.govt.nz/school/funding-and-financials/...