8 ms·

It all comes back to race in America, ever since schools were desegregated. And because in America school funding is local, rich zip codes have good schools and

by jquery 3y ago

It all comes back to race in America, ever since schools were desegregated. And because in America school funding is local, rich zip codes have good schools and poor zip codes have bad schools (to a reasonable approximation). Instead of fixing this fundamental problem, bad schools are held up as "failures" and used to push bad policy. Public schools require a lot of tax money and community involvement, and truly good public schools (say, Finland tier) require much more than billionaires are willing to pay. So we pretend public schools are fundamentally broken and push "school choice" which just drains resources from public schools even further in a negative feedback loop. We fracture the communities so that the wealthy experience one version of America and the poor experience an entirely different one. Rinse and repeat until the situation gets so bad like it has in Florida, and all the decent public school teachers are quitting en masse.

whimsicalism 3y ago
I don't think the story is quite that simple, for one: at least in my schooling experience, while it is true that property taxes help fund schools, most of the poor, bad-performing schools were allocated more $/student than the other schools once you account for federal funding. There's also pretty inconclusive evidence that school funding actually is tied to performance all that strongly at all. Interventions tied to giving schools more funding generally do not improve the performance of the school.
- jquery 3y ago
  > most of the poor, bad-performing schools were allocated more $/student than the other schools once you account for federal funding. Show me a poor school district with a public school that looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw >Interventions tied to giving schools more funding The funding needs to be unconditional. What good teacher is gonna move across a state line and go work for a poor school that has a year of conditional funding tied to test scores? It's also absurd on its face to think money has no effect on the quality of instruction, the market works pretty well for everything else, but teachers don't respond to incentives? They, do, and research shows it: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-... However, we don't do nearly enough to correct for the affects of poverty. Someone growing up in poverty needs a lot more education help than someone growing up in a middle class or upper class family (on average). Also, it's way, way more stressful to teach kids who are growing up in poverty than otherwise, but the salaries do not account for this. So the teachers who work at the poor schools are often working at their last choice school, even if the school nominally has the same level of funding. They're the teachers who couldn't get hired elsewhere, or were hired simply because the last teacher quit out of frustration (I don't want to begrudge teachers at poor schools, there's a lot who are very good at their jobs and who love their students, but this isn't enough to overcome systemic differences).
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    > Show me a poor school district with a public school that looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw Carmel HS in Indiana is funded at $9.6k/pupil [0]. My urban school district (DC Public Schools) spent ~$22k/pupil [1]. > It's also absurd on its face to think money has no effect on the quality of instruction, the market works pretty well for everything else, but teachers don't respond to incentives Schooling is not anywhere close to a market and public schools are not private enterprises. As I've shown above, my poor performing school district was much, much better funded than the Tiktok you linked - much of the problem is on how that many is spent and what is happening within the schools - inequality in funding is just not sufficient to explain gaps in performance. [2] The paper underlying your second link (https://www.nber.org/papers/w22011 https://www.nber.org/papers/w22011) seems strong and potentially causal, I will read it with interest. > However, we don't do nearly enough to correct for the affects of poverty. Someone growing up in poverty needs a lot more education help than someone growing up in a middle class or upper class family (on average). Also, it's way, way more stressful to teach kids who are growing up in poverty than otherwise, but the salaries do not account for this. So the teachers who work at the poor schools are often working at their last choice school, even if the school nominally has the same level of funding. They're the teachers who couldn't get hired elsewhere, or were hired simply because the last teacher quit out of frustration (I don't want to begrudge teachers at poor schools, there's a lot who are very good at their jobs and who love their students, but this isn't enough to overcome systemic differences). This part I largely do agree with, I think salaries do try to account for this to some degree (public teachers where I lived made 6 figures often if they taught in schools like these) but not to a significant enough degree (we should be paying close to software engineer salaries IMO). [0]: https://inview.doe.in.gov/schools/1030602505/finance https://inview.doe.in.gov/schools/1030602505/finance [1]: https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/per-pupil-expenditures https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/per-pupil-expenditure... [2]: http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/spending-schools http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/spending-schools
    - allturtles 3y ago
      Carmel also has well over 5K students. It's probably one of the largest high schools in the U.S. Scale like that allows you to fund more niche amenities.

by jquery 3y ago

whimsicalism 3y ago

I don't think the story is quite that simple, for one: at least in my schooling experience, while it is true that property taxes help fund schools, most of the poor, bad-performing schools were allocated more $/student than the other schools once you account for federal funding. There's also pretty inconclusive evidence that school funding actually is tied to performance all that strongly at all. Interventions tied to giving schools more funding generally do not improve the performance of the school.

jquery 3y ago
> most of the poor, bad-performing schools were allocated more $/student than the other schools once you account for federal funding. Show me a poor school district with a public school that looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw >Interventions tied to giving schools more funding The funding needs to be unconditional. What good teacher is gonna move across a state line and go work for a poor school that has a year of conditional funding tied to test scores? It's also absurd on its face to think money has no effect on the quality of instruction, the market works pretty well for everything else, but teachers don't respond to incentives? They, do, and research shows it: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-... However, we don't do nearly enough to correct for the affects of poverty. Someone growing up in poverty needs a lot more education help than someone growing up in a middle class or upper class family (on average). Also, it's way, way more stressful to teach kids who are growing up in poverty than otherwise, but the salaries do not account for this. So the teachers who work at the poor schools are often working at their last choice school, even if the school nominally has the same level of funding. They're the teachers who couldn't get hired elsewhere, or were hired simply because the last teacher quit out of frustration (I don't want to begrudge teachers at poor schools, there's a lot who are very good at their jobs and who love their students, but this isn't enough to overcome systemic differences).
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > Show me a poor school district with a public school that looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4dy25VmCw Carmel HS in Indiana is funded at $9.6k/pupil [0]. My urban school district (DC Public Schools) spent ~$22k/pupil [1]. > It's also absurd on its face to think money has no effect on the quality of instruction, the market works pretty well for everything else, but teachers don't respond to incentives Schooling is not anywhere close to a market and public schools are not private enterprises. As I've shown above, my poor performing school district was much, much better funded than the Tiktok you linked - much of the problem is on how that many is spent and what is happening within the schools - inequality in funding is just not sufficient to explain gaps in performance. [2] The paper underlying your second link (https://www.nber.org/papers/w22011 https://www.nber.org/papers/w22011) seems strong and potentially causal, I will read it with interest. > However, we don't do nearly enough to correct for the affects of poverty. Someone growing up in poverty needs a lot more education help than someone growing up in a middle class or upper class family (on average). Also, it's way, way more stressful to teach kids who are growing up in poverty than otherwise, but the salaries do not account for this. So the teachers who work at the poor schools are often working at their last choice school, even if the school nominally has the same level of funding. They're the teachers who couldn't get hired elsewhere, or were hired simply because the last teacher quit out of frustration (I don't want to begrudge teachers at poor schools, there's a lot who are very good at their jobs and who love their students, but this isn't enough to overcome systemic differences). This part I largely do agree with, I think salaries do try to account for this to some degree (public teachers where I lived made 6 figures often if they taught in schools like these) but not to a significant enough degree (we should be paying close to software engineer salaries IMO). [0]: https://inview.doe.in.gov/schools/1030602505/finance https://inview.doe.in.gov/schools/1030602505/finance [1]: https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/per-pupil-expenditures https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/per-pupil-expenditure... [2]: http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/spending-schools http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/spending-schools
  - allturtles 3y ago
    Carmel also has well over 5K students. It's probably one of the largest high schools in the U.S. Scale like that allows you to fund more niche amenities.