6 ms·

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

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.
- brewdad 4y ago
  The lower performing schools also tend to be older and require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools in wealthier areas. Not all of that additional per-pupil funding makes it to the classroom.
  - danans 4y ago
    > The lower performing schools also tend to be older and require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools in wealthier areas. Sure, that's a factor too, but I'd still call it a social service issue since it ultimately results from the historical disinvestment in the communities that today have low performing schools. There are reasons that the roofs didn't get repaired and the lead pipes didn't get replaced in those schools: because middle income people took their lives, businesses, and tax dollars out of those communities starting in the late 1960s, both by migrating to newly built suburbs, and also by ensuring their tax dollars never went toward the communities they left. Look up the opposition to "Robin Hood" school funding from the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up it was largely about keeping suburban tax dollars out of inner-city school districts.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      Except that this whole movement is now reversing. These communities are starting to gentrify and grow rich - to the horror of progressive activists everywhere! Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You just can't win!
    - 6502nerdface 4y ago
      A difference in maintenance costs is not necessarily a consequence of disinvestment... it could simply be that lower performing schools are more likely to be urban, and in urban areas everything related to the construction and maintenance of buildings, whether old or new, is more expensive (not to mention admin salaries, etc.). Or it could be that plus what you say for a double wammy at some schools. I'm just brainstorming reasonable seeming hypotheses that you could imagine trying to rule out with the right dataset.
  - car_analogy 4y ago
    The study I linked (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...) addresses this in table 1, page 8. Surprisingly, Black pupils get on average $10 less "infrastructure" expenditures, and $150 more "instructional" expenditures compared to White. The table breaks the spending down into 5 different categories, but in all of them, the differences are negligible. The $150 instructional expenditure difference is the largest.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Also you tend to find daycare programs for teenage mothers at poorer schools. Rich parents get their children abortions, while poor children give birth to their babies.
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    This is an oft-repeated myth, and in fact the opposite is true. "there are substantial disparities in abortion rates in the United States, with low-income women and women of color having higher rates than affluent and White women" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/
    - SgtBastard 4y ago
      If the incidence rate of teenage pregnancy amongst low-income women is significantly higher, then women amongst this group can simultaneously have more abortions AND be teenaged mothers completing schooling vs other groups.
- 6502nerdface 4y ago
  I wonder if another factor could be: - in higher performing schools, parents fund a number expenses directly through a very active PTA, so those expenses don't show up in the school's official spending per pupil, while - at lower performing schools with less active and more impoverished PTAs, those same expenses must be funded by school budgets, driving up their official per-pupil spending.
  - mturmon 4y ago
    Absolutely. Case in point, the La Canada (LA area) Educational Foundation -- https://lcfef.org/endowment/our-story/ https://lcfef.org/endowment/our-story/
  - danans 4y ago
    Absolutely, but the PTA at the higher performing (higher income) school pays for additional educational programs, like art, second language, science, etc. This amount is referred to in the PTA language as "the gap" in public funding for basics. At the low performing school, the extra public funds received are often paying for support staff for serious social issues. There is little budget for the "nice to haves", and even when there is, the school staff has it's hands full managing the basics, so it's not always effectively utilized.
corrral 4y ago
In my city, the worst schools tend to pay a good 20% better than the best ones, for teachers. They get lots of federal and state aid. People still usually prefer not to work at them, if they have options, because the work environment is terrible.
- bsuvc 4y ago
  Why is the work environment terrible?
  - corrral 4y ago
    Ever had a 3rd grader threaten to stab you, and look like they really mean it? A second grader call you the c-word? That kind of thing happening basically every day, often multiple times a day? Credible threats of gang violence on a regular basis. School-wide lockdowns with some regularity due to threats of violence, or violence that has actually occurred. Admin with extremely limited options to deal with any of this, and having to triage their discipline pretty hard, plus having little to no support from home to back any of it up (this is why the stuff in the first paragraph happens constantly—no time or community/parental willpower to deal with it, given the rest of what's going on). Watching the kids suffering from the same shit day after day, plus all the usually-awful stuff they have going on at home, and not being able to do much about it. Seeing kids die or end up in the hospital with alarming regularity. Distressingly young kids plainly high or drunk in class. Not many people can do that without burning out or giving up and half-assing everything, very quickly.
    - bsuvc 4y ago
      Hmm, I can't imagine having to deal with those things. People don't act like that where I live.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - lazide 4y ago
eli 4y ago
Sure. Title 1 schools, for example, get extra federal funding. They also have 40+% of students living in poverty. Some of that money goes to buy breakfast for kids who otherwise wouldn't have food to eat in the morning.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
Yeah this is a fact. I moved from SF to a suburb of Sacramento. Our SF school was absolutely horrible (and the main reason we moved). Our suburban school has a much smaller per-student budget but the student body is mainly from families where the parents are skilled tradesmen, white collar workers (mainly Asian or Indian), and state government workers. These families instill very different values in their kids than we saw in San Francisco. Although the suburb is highly diverse, 35% White, 30% Asian, 20% Hispanic, 15% Black, the student body is excellent. The high school here regularly sends a couple dozen seniors to Ivy League schools, and another 30-40 students to the UC System. And though they have few resources and a bad football team, the students have a chess club, robotics club, various study groups and college prep groups. There is also a big difference in what the kids here are focused on. In SF there was so much chatter about politics, protests, gender identity, and sexuality. Out here kids just seem to be focused on studying and after school activities. I much prefer this environment
- zozbot234 4y ago
  This comment is such peak HN. Maybe the people in SF don't care about these decadent bourgeois values that are so easily espoused, and would rather do their rightful part in fighting structures of oppression and injustice!
  - tristor 4y ago
    Let me translate: > decadent bourgeois values Values that produce measurably better life outcomes for participants. > would rather do their rightful part Refusing to participate thereby harming their own future and the community surrounding them. Or worse, actively encouraging others to reject values aligned with success. > fighting structures of oppression and injustice Fighting the most meritocratic system of governance we’ve had thus far in human history, whereby following values of success leads to success, whether you’re born here or elsewhere, and whatever your color, creed, or gender. I am not sure if you’re being serious, but if you are, you should know advocating for crab bucket mentality does nothing to help the impoverished.
  - TheMagicHorsey 4y ago

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.
brewdad 4y ago
The lower performing schools also tend to be older and require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools in wealthier areas. Not all of that additional per-pupil funding makes it to the classroom.
- danans 4y ago
  > The lower performing schools also tend to be older and require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools in wealthier areas. Sure, that's a factor too, but I'd still call it a social service issue since it ultimately results from the historical disinvestment in the communities that today have low performing schools. There are reasons that the roofs didn't get repaired and the lead pipes didn't get replaced in those schools: because middle income people took their lives, businesses, and tax dollars out of those communities starting in the late 1960s, both by migrating to newly built suburbs, and also by ensuring their tax dollars never went toward the communities they left. Look up the opposition to "Robin Hood" school funding from the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up it was largely about keeping suburban tax dollars out of inner-city school districts.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Except that this whole movement is now reversing. These communities are starting to gentrify and grow rich - to the horror of progressive activists everywhere! Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You just can't win!
  - 6502nerdface 4y ago
    A difference in maintenance costs is not necessarily a consequence of disinvestment... it could simply be that lower performing schools are more likely to be urban, and in urban areas everything related to the construction and maintenance of buildings, whether old or new, is more expensive (not to mention admin salaries, etc.). Or it could be that plus what you say for a double wammy at some schools. I'm just brainstorming reasonable seeming hypotheses that you could imagine trying to rule out with the right dataset.
- car_analogy 4y ago
  The study I linked (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...) addresses this in table 1, page 8. Surprisingly, Black pupils get on average $10 less "infrastructure" expenditures, and $150 more "instructional" expenditures compared to White. The table breaks the spending down into 5 different categories, but in all of them, the differences are negligible. The $150 instructional expenditure difference is the largest.
ModernMech 4y ago
Also you tend to find daycare programs for teenage mothers at poorer schools. Rich parents get their children abortions, while poor children give birth to their babies.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  This is an oft-repeated myth, and in fact the opposite is true. "there are substantial disparities in abortion rates in the United States, with low-income women and women of color having higher rates than affluent and White women" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/
  - SgtBastard 4y ago
    If the incidence rate of teenage pregnancy amongst low-income women is significantly higher, then women amongst this group can simultaneously have more abortions AND be teenaged mothers completing schooling vs other groups.
6502nerdface 4y ago
I wonder if another factor could be: - in higher performing schools, parents fund a number expenses directly through a very active PTA, so those expenses don't show up in the school's official spending per pupil, while - at lower performing schools with less active and more impoverished PTAs, those same expenses must be funded by school budgets, driving up their official per-pupil spending.
- mturmon 4y ago
  Absolutely. Case in point, the La Canada (LA area) Educational Foundation -- https://lcfef.org/endowment/our-story/ https://lcfef.org/endowment/our-story/
- danans 4y ago
  Absolutely, but the PTA at the higher performing (higher income) school pays for additional educational programs, like art, second language, science, etc. This amount is referred to in the PTA language as "the gap" in public funding for basics. At the low performing school, the extra public funds received are often paying for support staff for serious social issues. There is little budget for the "nice to haves", and even when there is, the school staff has it's hands full managing the basics, so it's not always effectively utilized.

corrral 4y ago

In my city, the worst schools tend to pay a good 20% better than the best ones, for teachers. They get lots of federal and state aid. People still usually prefer not to work at them, if they have options, because the work environment is terrible.

bsuvc 4y ago
Why is the work environment terrible?
- corrral 4y ago
  Ever had a 3rd grader threaten to stab you, and look like they really mean it? A second grader call you the c-word? That kind of thing happening basically every day, often multiple times a day? Credible threats of gang violence on a regular basis. School-wide lockdowns with some regularity due to threats of violence, or violence that has actually occurred. Admin with extremely limited options to deal with any of this, and having to triage their discipline pretty hard, plus having little to no support from home to back any of it up (this is why the stuff in the first paragraph happens constantly—no time or community/parental willpower to deal with it, given the rest of what's going on). Watching the kids suffering from the same shit day after day, plus all the usually-awful stuff they have going on at home, and not being able to do much about it. Seeing kids die or end up in the hospital with alarming regularity. Distressingly young kids plainly high or drunk in class. Not many people can do that without burning out or giving up and half-assing everything, very quickly.
  - bsuvc 4y ago
    Hmm, I can't imagine having to deal with those things. People don't act like that where I live.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lazide 4y ago

eli 4y ago

Sure. Title 1 schools, for example, get extra federal funding. They also have 40+% of students living in poverty. Some of that money goes to buy breakfast for kids who otherwise wouldn't have food to eat in the morning.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TheMagicHorsey 4y ago

Yeah this is a fact. I moved from SF to a suburb of Sacramento. Our SF school was absolutely horrible (and the main reason we moved). Our suburban school has a much smaller per-student budget but the student body is mainly from families where the parents are skilled tradesmen, white collar workers (mainly Asian or Indian), and state government workers. These families instill very different values in their kids than we saw in San Francisco. Although the suburb is highly diverse, 35% White, 30% Asian, 20% Hispanic, 15% Black, the student body is excellent. The high school here regularly sends a couple dozen seniors to Ivy League schools, and another 30-40 students to the UC System. And though they have few resources and a bad football team, the students have a chess club, robotics club, various study groups and college prep groups. There is also a big difference in what the kids here are focused on. In SF there was so much chatter about politics, protests, gender identity, and sexuality. Out here kids just seem to be focused on studying and after school activities. I much prefer this environment

zozbot234 4y ago
This comment is such peak HN. Maybe the people in SF don't care about these decadent bourgeois values that are so easily espoused, and would rather do their rightful part in fighting structures of oppression and injustice!
- tristor 4y ago
  Let me translate: > decadent bourgeois values Values that produce measurably better life outcomes for participants. > would rather do their rightful part Refusing to participate thereby harming their own future and the community surrounding them. Or worse, actively encouraging others to reject values aligned with success. > fighting structures of oppression and injustice Fighting the most meritocratic system of governance we’ve had thus far in human history, whereby following values of success leads to success, whether you’re born here or elsewhere, and whatever your color, creed, or gender. I am not sure if you’re being serious, but if you are, you should know advocating for crab bucket mentality does nothing to help the impoverished.
- TheMagicHorsey 4y ago