5 ms·

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

hackernewds 3y ago
Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Why do property taxes need to fund the school / why does wealth class dictate the quality of schooling you’re entitled to? Shouldn’t we give the best schooling to the students that will take the most advantage of it / get the most benefit out of it? There’s all sorts of stories about how privilege at birth gets you into all sorts of elite places through a mix of wealth (bribes) and connections. Yet true expertise in more objective fields (eg STEM) does not reward those as easily. Look at Ontario, Canada [1]. There’s an equal funding formula out of the general pool of funds for the province largely based on how many students are in your school board. The Toronto School Board (and I imagine other school boards too) then distribute their funds similarly [2]. School fundings isn’t tied to property taxes and it’s fundamentally weird to tie anything to property taxes as it gives back in services more to those areas that are already advantaged and creates skewed voting incentives. I’m not saying that education in Canada was perfect, but I found the public school system to be decent enough with lots of opportunity to excel regardless and generally an equalizer (home dynamics it can’t correct for and is a huge problem). For example, I went to a well-regarded STEM magnate program that had objective entrance requirements that I had to travel to embedded within the public school. Out of two I got into, I ended up picking one closer because it was more convenient for my mom even though the other one I got into was a bit better regarded / and somehow had better funding (maybe more students but I suspect also outside funding drives / donations). This travel problem repeats all the time with charter schools and is my main problem with the idea - when you’re wealthy travel is less of a problem (eg you have a very flexible work schedule). [1] https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-education-in-ontario/how-education-is-funded/ https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-education-in-ontario/ho... [2] https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-and-Financial-Statements/School-Budget-Allocations https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-an...
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  It doesn’t really matter how much tax is paid by “the rich” (say, top 1 in 1000), because collectively, they make too little money to make much of a difference even if we taxed 100% of their income. What does matter is taxation on top 20% of population, and they do pay a lot of money on property taxes.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    The income (including capital gains) of the top tenth of a percent are more than 10% of total income. The average federal income tax is under 15%. It would make a ridiculously large difference.
vlovich123 3y ago
Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) they send their kids to private schools. To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools. Charter schools are positioned as “choice” but quality schools will remain out of reach of people using the vouchers to try to get to a better school - transportation is the first hurdle and as soon as meaningful number of “poors” move in, the wealthy will abandon the public schools and move to private institutions with entrance requirements that try to filter out the less wealthy masses.
- charrondev 3y ago
  Is there a part of the world you could point to that banned private schools altogether and saw better aggregate outcomes? Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high). One other type of charter school to consider would be one’s specialized is students with various disadvantages such as charter schools specialized in blind, deaf, autistic or emotionally disturbed students. This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604731.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604731.pdf
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    If the public schools are good, the rich send to private schools for the exclusionary aspect more than for education outcomes so it doesn't really matter. I mean it matters in the sense that less talented people take up the spots for talented people, but not in terms of generating talent out of the general populace. > Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high). But that's the point. If the funding is uniform based on number of pupils, in fact affluent areas will have worse education because they'll have fewer students. The thing that's hard to fight is "funding drives" to buy things for the school. That's the other thing affluent areas do on top of having a higher baseline of funding due to property taxes. > This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools. That is correct. Ontario has additional funding for special education programs for those with disabilities on top of the normal funding per pupil
hajile 3y ago
This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school. In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt. Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). At that point, schools will have to compete on offering a good education instead of being the local monopoly you are forced into using. It also offers smart kids born into bad school districts a way out of the cycle of poverty. Politically, it’s weird too. This policy is fundamentally socialist redistribution, but is embraced by the right while being decried as evil by the left.
- eru 3y ago
  > Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)
  - hajile 3y ago
    That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.
    - eru 3y ago
      I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education. There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
      - hajile 3y ago
xyzzyz 3y ago
This federal 10%, along with state level funding, is typically used to level the funding across the districts. The equalization of per student spending in school districts across the country has largely already happened, with little to show for it in terms of improvement of low performing schools. Rich districts do have more local school funding than poor districts, but this difference is made up with state and federal funds. There is extreme scarcity of evidence for the idea that giving more money to schools improve outcomes of students. It simply doesn’t work this way. The worst performing schools in many US cities already have very high levels of funding with little to show it, for example in Washington DC. At the same time, quasi-experimental settings like Zuckerberg dropping $100M on Newark schools have basically zero effect in terms of student outcomes.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  Kids don't actually learn much curriculum content (as opposed to social behavior) when at school. They do that when at home. Poor kids' homes aren't conducive to learning. They lack the necessary materials, (undisturbed) space and time. Necessary social support for content learning is often absent. Wondering about why money given to schools (used for the most part for administrative nonsense presumably) doesn't change outcomes much consequently appears to show a (class based?) detachment from respective realities?
eru 3y ago
See eg https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... > This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, we’ve been shoveling money at the racial achievement gap for 40 years, to no avail. Part of the problem here is an assumption that public education is dominantly funded by local expenditure, which hasn’t been true for some time. In fact, state funding is at or near parity with local spending in the United States, and state funding is heavily tilted towards areas of perceived need (that is, failing schools or districts). Federal funding, including but hardly limited to Title I funding, is also dominantly directed towards poor or high-minority schools. The rising tide of think tank and foundation money that finds its way into public K-12 school is very hard to track, but we can safely assume that almost all of it is earmarked for the poorest students. We’ve been trying to spend our way our of this problem since before I was born! And yet people who should know better pretend not to understand this reality and repeat the complaint about local funding of public schools, despite the fact that that story is not true.
- enkid 3y ago
  This guys argument is based on a meta-analysis which has nothing at all to do with the argument he is making. The meta analysis in question (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf) is talking about how different research techniques measure data in different ways and therefore can't be easily compared. He then takes a look at this data, determines that it means interventions don't work very well (he doesn't argue they don't work, just that they don't work that well) and therefore concludes that we shouldn't even try to close the gaps in educational outcomes. You can't read a study and completely change it's meaning, especially since the study he cites is from researches that clearly believe evidence based educational intervention can work. In other words, the people who the author cites, who looked at the data more closely then the author hold opposite beliefs from the author.

hackernewds 3y ago

Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?

vlovich123 3y ago
Why do property taxes need to fund the school / why does wealth class dictate the quality of schooling you’re entitled to? Shouldn’t we give the best schooling to the students that will take the most advantage of it / get the most benefit out of it? There’s all sorts of stories about how privilege at birth gets you into all sorts of elite places through a mix of wealth (bribes) and connections. Yet true expertise in more objective fields (eg STEM) does not reward those as easily. Look at Ontario, Canada [1]. There’s an equal funding formula out of the general pool of funds for the province largely based on how many students are in your school board. The Toronto School Board (and I imagine other school boards too) then distribute their funds similarly [2]. School fundings isn’t tied to property taxes and it’s fundamentally weird to tie anything to property taxes as it gives back in services more to those areas that are already advantaged and creates skewed voting incentives. I’m not saying that education in Canada was perfect, but I found the public school system to be decent enough with lots of opportunity to excel regardless and generally an equalizer (home dynamics it can’t correct for and is a huge problem). For example, I went to a well-regarded STEM magnate program that had objective entrance requirements that I had to travel to embedded within the public school. Out of two I got into, I ended up picking one closer because it was more convenient for my mom even though the other one I got into was a bit better regarded / and somehow had better funding (maybe more students but I suspect also outside funding drives / donations). This travel problem repeats all the time with charter schools and is my main problem with the idea - when you’re wealthy travel is less of a problem (eg you have a very flexible work schedule). [1] https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-education-in-ontario/how-education-is-funded/ https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-education-in-ontario/ho... [2] https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-and-Financial-Statements/School-Budget-Allocations https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-an...
xyzzyz 3y ago
It doesn’t really matter how much tax is paid by “the rich” (say, top 1 in 1000), because collectively, they make too little money to make much of a difference even if we taxed 100% of their income. What does matter is taxation on top 20% of population, and they do pay a lot of money on property taxes.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  The income (including capital gains) of the top tenth of a percent are more than 10% of total income. The average federal income tax is under 15%. It would make a ridiculously large difference.

vlovich123 3y ago

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) they send their kids to private schools. To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools. Charter schools are positioned as “choice” but quality schools will remain out of reach of people using the vouchers to try to get to a better school - transportation is the first hurdle and as soon as meaningful number of “poors” move in, the wealthy will abandon the public schools and move to private institutions with entrance requirements that try to filter out the less wealthy masses.

charrondev 3y ago
Is there a part of the world you could point to that banned private schools altogether and saw better aggregate outcomes? Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high). One other type of charter school to consider would be one’s specialized is students with various disadvantages such as charter schools specialized in blind, deaf, autistic or emotionally disturbed students. This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604731.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604731.pdf
- vlovich123 3y ago
  If the public schools are good, the rich send to private schools for the exclusionary aspect more than for education outcomes so it doesn't really matter. I mean it matters in the sense that less talented people take up the spots for talented people, but not in terms of generating talent out of the general populace. > Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high). But that's the point. If the funding is uniform based on number of pupils, in fact affluent areas will have worse education because they'll have fewer students. The thing that's hard to fight is "funding drives" to buy things for the school. That's the other thing affluent areas do on top of having a higher baseline of funding due to property taxes. > This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools. That is correct. Ontario has additional funding for special education programs for those with disabilities on top of the normal funding per pupil

hajile 3y ago

This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school. In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt. Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). At that point, schools will have to compete on offering a good education instead of being the local monopoly you are forced into using. It also offers smart kids born into bad school districts a way out of the cycle of poverty. Politically, it’s weird too. This policy is fundamentally socialist redistribution, but is embraced by the right while being decried as evil by the left.

eru 3y ago
> Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)
- hajile 3y ago
  That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.
  - eru 3y ago
    I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education. There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
    - hajile 3y ago

xyzzyz 3y ago

This federal 10%, along with state level funding, is typically used to level the funding across the districts. The equalization of per student spending in school districts across the country has largely already happened, with little to show for it in terms of improvement of low performing schools. Rich districts do have more local school funding than poor districts, but this difference is made up with state and federal funds. There is extreme scarcity of evidence for the idea that giving more money to schools improve outcomes of students. It simply doesn’t work this way. The worst performing schools in many US cities already have very high levels of funding with little to show it, for example in Washington DC. At the same time, quasi-experimental settings like Zuckerberg dropping $100M on Newark schools have basically zero effect in terms of student outcomes.

Loquebantur 3y ago
Kids don't actually learn much curriculum content (as opposed to social behavior) when at school. They do that when at home. Poor kids' homes aren't conducive to learning. They lack the necessary materials, (undisturbed) space and time. Necessary social support for content learning is often absent. Wondering about why money given to schools (used for the most part for administrative nonsense presumably) doesn't change outcomes much consequently appears to show a (class based?) detachment from respective realities?

eru 3y ago

See eg https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... > This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, we’ve been shoveling money at the racial achievement gap for 40 years, to no avail. Part of the problem here is an assumption that public education is dominantly funded by local expenditure, which hasn’t been true for some time. In fact, state funding is at or near parity with local spending in the United States, and state funding is heavily tilted towards areas of perceived need (that is, failing schools or districts). Federal funding, including but hardly limited to Title I funding, is also dominantly directed towards poor or high-minority schools. The rising tide of think tank and foundation money that finds its way into public K-12 school is very hard to track, but we can safely assume that almost all of it is earmarked for the poorest students. We’ve been trying to spend our way our of this problem since before I was born! And yet people who should know better pretend not to understand this reality and repeat the complaint about local funding of public schools, despite the fact that that story is not true.

enkid 3y ago
This guys argument is based on a meta-analysis which has nothing at all to do with the argument he is making. The meta analysis in question (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf) is talking about how different research techniques measure data in different ways and therefore can't be easily compared. He then takes a look at this data, determines that it means interventions don't work very well (he doesn't argue they don't work, just that they don't work that well) and therefore concludes that we shouldn't even try to close the gaps in educational outcomes. You can't read a study and completely change it's meaning, especially since the study he cites is from researches that clearly believe evidence based educational intervention can work. In other words, the people who the author cites, who looked at the data more closely then the author hold opposite beliefs from the author.