3 ms·

To a less extreme extent, that was the case in my Bay Area school district. One school had phenomenal scores (due to a feedback loop of parents willing to pay m

To a less extreme extent, that was the case in my Bay Area school district. One school had phenomenal scores (due to a feedback loop of parents willing to pay more for housing to send their kid to a higher achieving school force their kid to achieve highly making the school higher achieving, raising house prices), and the others ranged from so-so, to pretty meager. They were probably all fine on a national average, but the funding definitely got dumped exclusively into the worse off schools, while the high achieving one couldn't scrape enough money together to repair their busted pool. Hell, the entirety of Los Angeles is under 1 school district. You're going to try and claim there isn't variance in student success/socioeconomic status between the highschools in Koreatown and Beverly Hills versus those in Compton? Maybe California has different incentives when it comes to school district organization, but that scenario definitely "really happens" here.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Doesn't California have a more state wide funding model due to Proposition 13? They basically have to send sales tax back to schools to make up for property tax revenue losses, which they can do more equitably. The same thing happens in Washington state due to a supreme court ruling (but with property taxes instead of sales taxes). Still, Palo Alto High School isn't in the same district with East Palo Alto High School, and it is pretty obvious which one has access to more resources. Seattle is like LA, we are all one school district. But there is a huge difference between the poorest public school in Seattle vs. the richest public school in Yakima. And we have equalization of school funding via the state. What winds up happening here, however, is that school districts use funding from normal students to subsidize special education students, but have to be careful because they get funding from the state for each student equally (so if they lose their cheaper to educate advanced students to private schools or adjacent school districts, they have less money to educate their expensive to educate special ed students).

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Doesn't California have a more state wide funding model due to Proposition 13? They basically have to send sales tax back to schools to make up for property tax revenue losses, which they can do more equitably. The same thing happens in Washington state due to a supreme court ruling (but with property taxes instead of sales taxes). Still, Palo Alto High School isn't in the same district with East Palo Alto High School, and it is pretty obvious which one has access to more resources. Seattle is like LA, we are all one school district. But there is a huge difference between the poorest public school in Seattle vs. the richest public school in Yakima. And we have equalization of school funding via the state. What winds up happening here, however, is that school districts use funding from normal students to subsidize special education students, but have to be careful because they get funding from the state for each student equally (so if they lose their cheaper to educate advanced students to private schools or adjacent school districts, they have less money to educate their expensive to educate special ed students).