Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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The report has some very misleading assertions about school funding. It asserts:

> On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, according the study.

The source of that statistics is this report: https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGaps20... (Figure 1). But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts. For example, Figure 1 shows Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois as states with the biggest (double digit) gaps. But accounting for federal funds, the gap disappears in New York, Maryland, and Illinois: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2... (change the drop down to state, local, and federal funding).

In Maryland, for example, Baltimore City has much higher spending per student than wealthy (and much more expensive) suburbs like Montgomery County: https://www.google.com/amp/s/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/20....

> But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts.

Federal Funding is very low and has shrunk to 10% of funding for education. With education dollars it comes with designations and paper work. Most school districts have to spend hundreads of thousands of dollars on admins and staff to follow through with Federal funding. My inner city district had to fire 3 principles so we could recieve $2,000,000 in funding in 3 years. We got $400,000 and probably lost money out of the deal.

Federal funding for schools shouldn't exist, imo. I'd prefer to see states handle everything related to funding and operating their education systems and the Dept of Ed perform a metrics/analytics/analysis/recommendation function, so that effective changes made by one state can be propagated out to the others, if they want it.

IMO, we should only have Federal funding for schools.

Having local, state, and federal involvement in funding adds complexity without providing any net benefit. EX: People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.

Disagree. Moving funding to a federal level might be more efficient but gives me, as a resident of one particular state, less control over how much is spent on education. I have zero interest in seeing a nationally funded education system gutted because a party I don't support is elected from states I don't live in that have outsize influence.

Further, the "laboratories of democracy" model means that if I don't like how my state is doing education, I'm free to move to another one.

> People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. You don't think states are big enough to get economies of scale?

> Not sure... scale?

If some state say Iowa sees most young people move out of state then they don't get direct economic benefits from educating well. Alternatively, Virginia may benefit from importing an educated population and have less economic incentive to educate it's own population well.

Yes, their are incentives to educate your own children well, but a Florida retiree may not have any kids or grand kids in state and thus not care about educating people without a direct connection to them.

Those connections and thus incentives become more direct at the national level.

Sadly it is against the US Constitution.

Personally, Common Core standards for all states was a great idea that we will never see again in our lifetime.

I do want all local taxes and property tax to be removed from Educational funding and all funding to be statewide and the same per student across the state. (This might happen in our lifetimes)

My county has ~40,000 (aging) people and 5 public school districts. The notion of local control isn't going anywhere.

"(aging)" is just a remark about the demographics skewing away from children as the economy here stumbles along.

How well will that work out for poorer states?

Shouldn't make much difference, at a guess. Poorer states will generally have proportionally cheaper cost of living, real estate, etc. and should be able to do more with less as a result.

It starts with people not wanting to help other states. Now we have wealthier neighborhoods in the same city breaking off to form their own cities do they can separate themselses from the poorer parts of the city.

West Virginia (My wife is from there) has a higher cost of living and 2/3 of the income than where we live in Eastern PA.

Since Baltimore City is getting more money per student, why aren't they able to properly maintain their buildings [1]? Poor management? Corruption? Lack of heating and working bathrooms is inexcusable.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-wint...

Older infrastructure requiring more maintenance, plus higher expenses/labor costs of city vs suburbs.

That might be true generally (and cities like New York and DC have really high per capita spending for that reason), but Baltimore is quite a bit less expensive than the surrounding suburbs. You can buy a gorgeously renovated townhouse in a nice neighborhood for $400-500k, a fraction of what it would cost in Montgomery County.

That has little to do with how expensive it is to maintain a building, especially a government building.

How expensive would it be to put space heaters in every classroom? Even window heaters are only $500. Surely a school district that spends $17m a year on maintenance can come up with that. My guess is bureaucracy/mismanagement is the real problem. The larger a school district is, the more bureaucracy.

Ok--http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci... The money is there apparently.

Ever plug in 20 space heaters at once in a building whose electrical systems are over 50 years old?

They certainly have a problem with mismanagement, but having to use space heaters to warm a classroom means things are going seriously wrong.

Remember Freddie Gray? It’s the same municipal government in charge of education too.

Suburban areas in the US aren't old enough to get hit with infrastructure maintenance costs like the urban areas are. This is a really interesting article about the profitability and maintainability of growth: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

Baltimore has much older infrastructure and buildings than any of its suburbs. That would lead to higher costs not to mention higher costs for being an urban metro to begin with.

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