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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 a

by 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.

by danans 4y ago

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.