And these are not people who choose to be poor or incapable. They really don't have any other option.
Even politicians who spend so much time and effort highlighting inequalities in society are able to do so because they had to drive to make themselves to do it. If their manner of achieving things is for good or ill is up for debate, but there is no arguing that they are where they are because they chose to go for it.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step...
Every rich person in almost every country in the world can spend money to improve education for disadvantaged children. So I fail to see what makes the country looking good here.
It's not like our country doesn't do anything - it's a very complex problem. There are efforts and they tend to have mediocre results at best. I've personally worked in some of these programs and the reality is govt just isn't well suited for the nuance and individual attention/thought different disadvantaged groups require. I'd wager that if you have ideas about how to fix these issues they'd be similarly flawed.
As a simple example, per the numbers cited at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/10/stud... DC public schools spend a good bit more per student that neighboring Montgomery County, MD. The schools in Montgomery County are quite a bit better in terms of most of the things you list, except perhaps addiction treatment and at-risk intervention programs (about which I can't speak usefully; I don't know much about the state of them in Montgomery County).
Now DC is a pretty dysfunctional case in terms of the ineffectiveness of its spending. If I compare all the numbers being cited here to the numbers for Chicago Public Schools that https://www.illinoispolicy.org/cps-to-spend-an-additional-20... mentions (which are easily 3x lower), it seems pretty clear to me that more money would in fact help improve CPS pretty drastically. And there are certainly lots of places in the US that are in the same situation as CPS.
On the other hand, you also have the numbers in https://nypost.com/2017/06/14/ny-spends-more-money-per-stude... which has NYC schools at almost $22k per student, with somewhat mixed results. It's pretty common for suburban school districts to spend a good bit less than that with results that are comparable or better, for a variety of reasons.
All of which is to say that there are some school districts where money would definitely help, some where fixing the systemic mismanagement of the large amounts of money already being spent would help more, and some where it's not clear what would help the most...
Throwing money at education _can_ help. It just doesn't _have_ to, unfortunately...
This is a solved problem in other countries.
Finland is a good example. Their education system focuses on equality above all: all kids are going to have access to the same educational opportunities, even if equality comes at the cost of quality. As part of this idea, privately funded schools are not allowed. Guess what happens when rich people must send their kids to public schools, in a place where all schools must be equal above all? Suddenly all the schools improve.
The problem isn't inherent to government in principle, but perhaps to our forms of government in America in practice.
This was my greatest concerned, which unfortunately proved true, when we introduced private schools in Sweden: previously if your kid didn't get a good education you had to try to improve the school. So the efforts of the resourceful parents helped the kids with less resourceful parents. Now when people are unhappy with their kids education they just send them to a different school, leaving the disadvantaged kids behind in schools that no one cares about trying to improve.
And I understand from an American perspective that sounds normal. But for me that is no way to build a society.
(US) I sometimes wonder if fundraising by public schools (bake sales, car washes, etc) should be banned unless the raised funds are distributed evenly across all local public schools based on their headcount. I can't give money to a city or state and demand it's spent in one particular place, why should I be able to do so for a school district?
In many countries, this is not a given: either directly forbidden or infeasible due to red tape.
If one school runs an experiment and it's a flop, it's a sad but it's limited to one school.
If a government mandates a particular way of schooling, the initial good effect is multiplied faster. But the initial bad effect is multiplied, too.
The fact that the US have a variety of school programs is a boon for the nation at large. They are mostly not great, but that's another problem. (See also e.g. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html for some good pointers at problems.)
I applaud Lebron.
Government has shown time and again that it’s one size fits all approach towards schooling isn’t working. Combine their poor execution, purposeful lack of civics training, with special interests and rent seeking, for example, school textbooks.
We are leaving way too many kids behind as it is. It’s turned into government day care.
I would argue school is where citizens need to have the greatest choice, the most impact, and get the most involved with their own dollars.
If our future is in education, it needs to be done differently than it is now.
Government has not shown that at all, look around the world an you'll find plenty of examples of government providing quality education to all.
195 countries, less than a dozen countries with non-small size populations are doing a good job at all on education.
The rest - where's the proof? Where are the results? Look at the development situations in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Venezuela and so on.
Where's this overwhelming outcome proof that government education particularly works so well?
China still has half a billion people with the equivalent of a fifth grade education or less. They've had an all-powerful government for over half a century.
The vast majority of the world still struggles with basic economic development, basic government functions, extreme corruption, basic human rights and inconsistently available utilities.
When you strip out the tiny nations like Luxembourg, Iceland, Qatar, Ireland, Finland, Norway, Singapore, Cyprus, Malta, Kuwait, etc. - you have about two dozen nations above the global average GDP per capita level (a mere $10k). That's how piss poor the world's situation actually still is on education results.
Take a look at the development index on the world, then drop out the tiny nations. Where are all the large nation success stories on governments doing such a great job? There are exceptionally few anywhere to be found.
It's all tiny nations, and it's obvious why: it's because the people are closer to their government in those nations. It's dramatically easier to hold your government accountable, and to make government very personal, when your nation has 500k or 5m people, versus 50m+.
You can count the larger nations that do education really well on just two hands.
Frankly, I look around the world and find a mix of authoritarian regimes and countries whose capitals are burning down in riots. A minority balance the need for broadness with the need for experimentation (and repelling political meddling.)
There are merits to preventing government from monopolising social services.
Do you know why the school offers free food and clothes to parents, and why that’s making a difference here? Because the parents can’t afford enough healthy food, and giving them food helps them and their children do better. But seriously, why do we have children and adults who are so unable to feed themselves that they can’t think straight?
Our economy has utterly failed these people, or perhaps was never meant to serve them. And if a philanthropist has to give them groceries, it sounds like the food stamp system hasn’t been enough either.
Don’t mistake my outrage for cynicism.