As a portion of the economy, just our public spending on healthcare is higher than the OECD average public spending: https://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/newsroom/4...
Regardless, you could also argue that -- similar to healthcare -- dollars in is not a great metric anyway. Are we getting the best outcomes for that money? We certainly aren't for healthcare, and my (admittedly incomplete) reading on this topic is that our K-12 education system is nothing to be particularly proud of.
Instead, it is evidence that there is bipartisan support for educational spending, but with uneven beneficiaries.
This is a different issue and the solutions to the first problem are not the solutions to the second.
Last, this isn't really a partisan federal issue. Most school spending is determined the state or local level and the same inequality is present in predominantly red and blue states.
That does not correspond with the rhetoric that I've seen. Republicans are adamantly opposed to increasing spending for public education, and have systematically cut support for higher education spending in state budgets. Instead, I regularly see the meme that there's tons of fat in the education system; that we spend just as much as everyone else, but have worse outcomes. The fault is in the schools for not spending what they have wisely enough.
And I think that the funding story is flatly untrue. Because the dominant source of public education funding is from local taxes, there are vast differences in the per-student level of funding across the country.
This is patently false. Local governments provide 45% of K-12 educational spending. State governments spend 47% and the federal government spends 8%: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/styles/optimized_d.... State and federal funding go overwhelmingly to erasing the disparities in local funding.
Look at the funding numbers in your own state. Here is mine: https://i2.wp.com/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/wp-content/up.... The funding differences are based on cost of living, not local income. My solidly middle/upper middle class county has spending near the bottom because it’s pretty rural. Baltimore which is very poor has among the highest. Montgomery and Prince George’s, which are opposite sides of the income spectrum, get almost the same amount of funding. You can also see in that chart how differences in local funding are more than compensated for by differences in state funding.
And it isn't enough. Not even close.
Boulder Valley: 13.8k/student. Pueblo: 10.5k/ea. Fort Morgan: 9.5k/student. Those are sufficiently widely varying that looking at "average spending" paints an inaccurate picture.
Durham public schools: 10.5k/ea. Chapel-Hill/Carrboro: 15k/ea.
https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_...
Range of total spending per student spreads by over a factor of 4x.
Second, I’m not sure what your Colorado example is supposed to prove. Boulder is a much more expensive city than Pueblo. Land for schools is cheaper, salaries are lower, etc. Those costs seem roughly comparable accounting for local costs.
Third, comparing spending across states is deeply misleading. The cost of schooling in Idaho (which makes up several of the lowest spending school districts in your link) bears little relation to the cost of schooling in New York (which makes up several of the highest spending school districts in your link). The irony of your example is that Idaho spends about 1/3 of what New York spends per student, and Idaho students outperform New York students: https://www.sde.idaho.gov/assessment/naep/files/general/naep...
Fourth, even the low spending school districts in your examples spend more than European countries: https://www.statista.com/statistics/381745/education-expendi.... School spending in London is about $7,402 per student. That’s substantially less than Pueblo or Durham, and only a bit more than the state average for Idaho ($7,100). I guarantee you that money goes a hell of a lot further in Durham or Boise than London!
> Third, comparing spending across states is deeply misleading.
This is why you cannot use averages to talk about school funding relative to the rest of the OECD. That's my point. You asked for statistics in my state. I gave them, in my most recent two states of residence.
I wonder if it has to do with the level of services expected and provided between locations, states, and counties.
For example, I know that special needs students, which can be notoriously expensive to educate.
Spending levels are much higher than parent reported. [1] for one school chosen at random shows that their budget was almost 8000 GBP/pupil - over 30% higher than cited. Furthermore, 82% was staffing. A mere 3% is allocated to facilities.
In my local school district[2], salaries for all staff add up to a little less than 60% of the budget. Facilities (21.6%) and debt service (7.6%) are a far greater fraction of our costs.
In short, the "education is cheaper in London" story is a lie. Many of their costs are payed for by a different color of money entirely, and simply doesn't show up on the education budget.
[1] https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/school...
[2] https://www.adams12.org/financial-services/documents/fiscal-...
Moreover, many countries exempt teachers from the national pension scheme, just like the US. The UK, which I used as an example above, has a teacher pension system
French income tax maxes out at 45% on income above €157,807, while US federal income tax maxes out at 37% above $518,401
That said, what do you think drives the disparity in outcomes between different US districts and schools, if the funding roughly tracks with cost of living? Similarly, why are schools in European countries so much more efficient in terms of educational costs?
One thought on the first question that comes to my mind is that students who are impoverished or have english as a second language will not have comparable outcomes, even if their school districts have comparable funding.
I wonder if one aspect of the second question is the handling of special education for disabled students. Do European countries educate these students in a different manner from the US. Is the funding taken into account when we look at per student costs?
This is what I said as well. There is also vast difference in per-student spending within blue states and blue counties. This is evidence that the problem crosses party lines.
I'd see it rather as evidence that most educational spending happens at the state and local level, not the federal level.
Obviously high-cost states spend more than low-cost states. But their education spending is consistent with the size of their economies. Mississippi has a GSP per capita of $35,000 and spends $8,700 per student. Italy, Spain, and New Zealand have similar GDP per capita and also spend a similar amount per student.
Its really terrifying to see people confidently and passionately argue about politics while pulling their "facts" from an alternate universe.
This awkwardly also highlights ignored externalities and implied awkward questions in ways essentially nobody is comfortable is with the implications of especially regarding free choice and perverse incentives where the "best" option still has messed up implications.
The highest paid government employees in most states are football coaches for the state schools? Why? I thought schools job were to educate not cause brain injuries in their students? Why pay millions of tax payer dollars earmarked for education for someone to coach a game that injures the mental capacity of the students. Why not hire more professors with that money? why not pay teachers more or fix facilities buy material and equipment make teachers not have to spend their own money on basic supplies?
I used to feel this way too, but my understanding is that investing in sports programs tends to _bring in_ more money for universities, on net. I don't think it's accurate to consider it as trading off against academic investment.
At any rate, this is a bit tangential: American universities are the best in the world, so the conversation is more about high school and lower, where our educational outcomes lag by some metrics.
One of the best places in America to get education happens to be free: the public school system of Lexington [1]. But you'd be hard-pressed to get a house there for less than a million. Secondly, every other student in Lexington happens to have private instructors on the side. It's funny, if you randomly walk into a Starbucks in Lexington, chances are very highly you'll see an elder person with a young person training for standardized exams.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-...