Make education funding federal, and have a nationwide push to have small classes and well funded schools for everybody, and this would be fixed in 10 years. As it is, rich districts pay more taxes and get better schools. Funny that.
Baltimore City has less than half the local education funding of Anne Arundel (a predominantly white, upper middle class county containing Annapolis and the Naval Academy). But state and federal funding more than makes up for it. Baltimore gets $12,200 per student from the state, versus $5,300 for Anne Arundel. And it gets an extra almost $1,000 from the federal government. In all, Baltimore getting about $3,000 more per student than Anne Arundel. Allegheny County, a mostly white but lower income county, also gets significantly more funding. Note that cost of living is also higher in Anne Arundel than the other two places.
In most states, poorer districts actually get slightly more funding than richer districts: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-....
Experiments in Brazil and India suggest that the really simple, dumb solution works best: give poor people money, no strings attached.
Sure, they'll waste some of it. But not all that much, maybe a third. To economists, that's very effective targeting.
(If you demand perfect targeting and use of funds here, why not with private-sector investments (67%-90% loss rate) or 'normal' government investments (50% - 75% losses)? )
Only 36% of Black kids live with married parents: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FT_18...
Stop giving additional welfare to single-parent households.
First is that the federal government doesn't have the legal standing to take over the education system. I believe it would require a constitutional amendment to allow it and I don't think they'd get that passed.
Secondly, I'm not sure it is such a great idea. Currently federal level education direction comes from the teachers union and you can see the fruits of its labors in our current schools. Also I think this will make the current broken system harder to fix as it will institutionalize many of the current practices and make local experimentation much harder.
IMO what we need to do is move away from the industrial revolution era school system. We aren't training a bunch of factory workers anymore and that needs to be reflected in how we teach. We really need to do a lot more trials with alternative educational styles in public school. My understanding is that one of the biggest hurdles to this is the teachers union and their adherence to the current model.
I do think funding is an issue, but even if you could magically fix that you'd still have bad schools. There would just be less disparity between them.
Nor does the federal government have to take over the education system to achieve this, it just has to guarantee equal funding for all students. Or the US can continue to set poor whites against poor blacks as it has now for centuries, and watch itself become increasingly uncompetitive with any country that makes a commitment to equal educational standards for all. "This used to be the greatest country in the world", etc.
Parents are also somewhat a defense against bad teachers. There’s nothing quite like a parent hounding you and your principal about their child’s academic performance.
Poor discipline in a school can demoralise a teacher.
You also need to get rid of teachers who are badly underperforming. This can be very difficult, which is also demoralising.
I've gleaned the above from having many family and extended family members in teaching.
I knew what I wanted though. Every class had 1-2 students that were hungry to learn, rest were there because easy money or such. Eventually dropped out and had a successful start to a career. Far outpacing those that stayed in.
That was a awhile ago.
I know some school have way better curriculums these days.
Still, I refuse to hire jr develops unless I see that same hunger to get better.
There is plenty of debate about what makes for good schools. Many school districts are large enough to include neighborhoods on "both sides of the tracks". It is the same school district with the same pay, same class sizes, same teacher demographics, but different student body demographics. Result is often a large disparity in outcomes for students. In one school, a student who wants to succeed has to compete with his classmates who want the same thing. In another, the same student would be abused by classmates for trying to succeed. Parents in these latter districts will often make huge efforts to pretend to be living a few miles away to give their children not smaller classes or different teachers but different classmates.
The claim that good schools are good because of small class sizes and higher teacher pay, that it is as simple as that and that there is "really no debate" is false. Pointing out that A and B are not the only factors, it's not as simple as that, that there is plenty of debate, and describing an additional factor beyond just A & B is not "dismissing" A and B.
Consider the scenario I described: a large school district with multiple neighborhoods where the admin, funding, class sizes, teacher pay, etc., are the same but the student bodies differ. You might be able to equalize outcomes by giving the lower-performing school smaller classes and better-paid teachers, or you might not, but even if you did, you would then have to explain why a school with smaller classes and better-paid teachers wasn't doing any better than one without those features. The answer would remain the same: because there are other factors that matter, too. It's not as simple as just smaller classes and better pay for teachers, and there is plenty of debate about what factors matter and how much.
As far as I'm aware, states that spend more per pupil don't significantly outperform those that spend less...
Since the US Dept of Ed was created by Jimmy Carter, can you show positive results and benefits of this approach?
The Dept of Ed is pretty far removed from what the grandfather comment is advocating for, so I'm not sure why they would advocate for it.
It doesn't establish curricula, it doesn't run schools, it doesn't even run accreditations. 92% of current funding for primary and secondary education is state or local-level.
I struggle to see how this is wrong. It's not any different than rich people buying private education, though it makes it easier for non-rich folks to try and find the cheapest place in that district so they can benefit from the well-funded schools.
It seems popular to think that people should have equal opportunity, independent of any other factors. But from the perspective of a parent, why should I be disallowed from providing my own kids every possible advantage I can afford?
Because it's bad for society, and because there's a long since established moral precedent in favor of things that may make life slightly worse for any given individual but better for a large majority of everyone.
It's also worth keeping in mind that there's a massive difference between "rich" and "ultra-rich". "Rich" and "poor" are, if anything, closer to each other than either is to "ultra-rich", and spreading out the spending of that last category would dramatically benefit an overwhelming majority of people without hurting the schools of ultra-rich areas in a way that, frankly, anyone should actually care about.
That is a very big claim. It seems just as plausible to suggest that society will in fact be collectively better off if every parent gives their kid the best possible start in life, even if some kids will miss out due to circumstance.
I recall hearing from New Jersey and judges taking strict stances of equal outcome in education that found locality funding discriminatory, was that the poorer districts needed to be funded more per student to start to reach parity. Which makes some sense on some levels given knowledge and habits from parents transferring and would need more effort and funding to catch up because they are already providing more teaching just in a remotely middle-class concept.
That sort of equality is clear folly, like trying to force every kid into creches and separate them from parents. It might work with some hypothetical aliens but in practice for humans prepare for massive psychic trauma, inevitable abuse from caretakers, and frankly a well deserved outright insurrection and rebellion.
Don't get me wrong, working to raise the floor is a noble goal and makes sense just from rational selfishness alone. Throwing more money at the high end is 'dimminshed returns' but the money has already been allocated for better or worse. And well the obvious caveats of how the money is spent matters, there is no fixed true universal value per of any unit or commodity.
I feel like I have to mention that I'm a black person here.
But, we also have to look at statistics and think longitudinally instead of anecdotally.
I came from a middle class family in a small town in the south. But my mom being a well connected high school math teacher did give me some advantages.
When I graduated from college, I had a choice between taking a job in a slightly larger city where I could have afforded to take care of myself or move to Atlanta where I could get a job as a computer operator based on a previous internship. But the pay was crap.
I wanted to move to Atlanta because I knew I would have more opportunities. My parents had already bought me car, they subsidized me for the first year, and the rest is history - I was able to network my way into getting a software development position. This was in the late 90s.
My classmate couldn’t afford to make those choices. He was stuck taking a COBOL programming job in the 90s - the same job I turned down and still is doing that to this day in the same city.
And from what I’ve been seeing, COBOL just isn’t going anywhere. Those mainframes really are built to last. So he should probably have a job for the rest of his life. I hope he’s got a nice pension.
We graduated in the mid 90s. The book was last updated in 1985. He told me he was still programming in COBOL. I just got quiet. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to insult him.
Of course not, but what's your point? The stereotype is accurate. Go read the very article this discussion is about, and it says black families average about 2/3 the income of non-black families. That is reality, and wishing it away won't make it less true. If we want to figure out a long term solution, we can't deny uncomfortable truth.
Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining...
Of course not all black people are poor, but that's a very poor understanding of statistics. Just because a black man became President or there are millionaire black men, doesn't mean that institutional racism is suddenly over or economic equality has been established.
If the average black family were wealthier than the average white family AND we would keep seeing such difference, it would be interesting to wonder why. But there is nothing new in poor people not being able to access to long studies.
The problem is poverty, not race.
If this was too difficult to understand then I'll explain it differently. If there are environmental differences between races such as socioeconomic background then you can fix things like educational attainment by improving the socioeconomic background of black people. If there is no environmental difference or solving the environmental difference gives no improved outcomes then this basically means black people are somehow inferior to white people simply based on their race. I don't think that is true. Poor white people suffer from the same things poor black people suffer from so an explanation that is purely based on race is completely insufficient. However you want to deny the socioeconomic differences and blame the differences in ability entirely on race.
Or it means perfectly competent black people are excluded simply because they are black; because the white people who gate-keep academic institutions are racist.
Drugs and crime have destroyed the family structure in all poor neighborhoods.
Frankly there is a strong anti-education bent moving through the entire Republican party, educated people hare harder to control.