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Comment by bobcostas55 | Hacker News Reader

>In many states, the vast majority of school funding comes from property taxes. So schools in wealthy neighborhoods are better funded than schools in poor neighborhoods, and this guarantees homes in wealthy school districts maintain their value since everyone wants their kids in those schools.

In the US, school funding is (on average) progressive because federal and state funding more than offsets any local inequalities. See https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-f...

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In the United States teachers school supplies, equipment for band, gear for sports and other items that contribute directly to the quality of a students education and experience are funded by bake sales, booster clubs and other sources of funding that was not at all accounted for in the article you linked or argument you make. At some schools these programs bring in six figure $ from kids reselling boutique cupcakes their mom bought, probably taking a $2 loss on each. Other schools can barely manage to raise $200 at a bake sale.

Do you know of any systematic figures on such things?

A six-figure bake sale (if I grant that it happened) is probably 1% of the school's budget (at a school of 1000 in CA, or 500 in NY). I always thought such things existed more as social occasions for parents to get to know teachers and v-v, in a more co-operative context than parent-teacher evenings.

Here is an article I found by The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/11/pta-fu...

"PTA at a well-off school might raise a million dollars or more to pay for additional teachers’ salaries, band or orchestra instruments, a new library, iPads for classrooms, field trips, or other initiatives."

"I later learned that most of the shiny extras (and even some full-time aides and specialty subject teachers) at the other schools were funded by PTAs with budgets in the six and seven figures. Our school’s PTA had less than a thousand dollars in the bank."

Thanks. If I was going to pick the location for the craziest such local contrast, I would for sure pick NYC.

But it would be interesting to know if there are more systematic figures anywhere, that apply to cities not containing Wall Street.

The Center For American Progress released a 2017 study[1] based on fiscal 2013-2014 data. The top 50 richest PTAs are listed in Appendix I.

[1] https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2017/04/180...

Thanks! So for these top-50 schools, it comes out to about 10% extra budget. And there are about 100_000 public schools in the USA.

Yes. It exacerbates the inequality because most of the top-50 richest PTA schools can afford extras that boost student engagement or provide in-class assistance via teaching assistants thus lowering the student:teacher ratio.

When a PTA can afford to pay for extras that the school doesn't or can't (e.g. extra art & music teachers, computer labs, playground monitors, etc.), a student's quality of life at such public schools is generally objectively better compared to students at public schools without the extra budget. The year-over-year budget boosts are profound.

Yes this is true. But it doesn't seem that big to me: 10% extra budget isn't nothing, but it's at a few schools which are competing with private schools, which (I think) charge more like 2-3 times as much.

And this is the top fraction of 1% of public schools. The merely top-20% schools, nice suburbs far away from wall street, they raise a fraction of this. I don't think it can explain very much of what's different there compared to the bottom-20% schools across town.

That doesn’t say anything about a Uber style bake sale lose money on every order scheme. PTAs accept donations.

I agree with your overall premise, there was no need to make up a story around it.

This was hyperbole. I don't think I made anything up, I only exaggerated the concept of buying commercially produced muffins to be resold for 0 revenue to the purchaser.

A more grounded example of this behavior is well off parents buying their child's quota of items that are meant to be sold door to door out of a catalog to raise money. I don't know the name of this type of fundraising but this is a behavior I have witnessed many times. Parents buying overpriced crap out of a catalog so that their kid gets the extra credit and other perks offered by the school in exchange for this.

>band, gear for sports and other items that contribute directly to the quality of a students education and experience

You don't fiddle your way out of generations of poverty.

Parents like to see their kids do extracurricular activities but technical skills (math, also physics) and communication skills (English) are what people need to succeed in life if they are coming from a background lacking in material wealth. When you don't have a lot of opportunities coming your way you need to be able to make good on the ones you do get.

Children do not thrive in stale, lifeless institutions that treat them like machines to be programmed with knowledge. They require opportunities for creativity, play, exploration, and also nutritious food and exercise.

Miserable, sickly children do not grow into intelligent, resilient, persistent adults who can claw their way out of poverty.

True, but there are cheap ways to get the play, exploration and exercise needed. Nutrition is overall cheap as well, but it requires time and effort that might not be available.

Hmm... Asian children educated in such schools seem to thrive just fine.

I didn't believe you so I looked up estimated suicide rates per 100,000 per country from the WHO[1].

Turns out my intuition was incorrect based solely on estimated suicide data: The US has an estimated suicide rate for kids between 10-19 of 12.5 per 100K, while most other Asian country have lower estimated suicide rates (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, etc), except for India which has the 4th highest estimated suicide rate for 10-19 year olds of 23.1 per 100K.

Although I'd still argue (weakly) that most Asian children aren't exactly thriving based on anecdotal evidence, and perhaps all that the estimated suicide rates indicate are that Asian children can grind through their respective education systems. However, I can't think of any other readily available figures that could help make my case so I am checking my gut intuition at the door.

[1] https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDE5YEARAGEGRO...

There was a pretty good line about this in the John Adams dramatization from HBO:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

(No idea what this website is, it was the first search result I found that had the quotation: https://livingforimprovement.com/two-powerful-life-lessons-f...)

Go look at the schools in poor Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Last year, Columbus City Schools cancelled classes several days because it was too hot. If you look at teachers' salaries, the city school districts pay significantly less than the surrounding suburbs, while having higher student/teacher ratios and a disproportionate number of students with Individualized Education Plans, that are English-learners, or that have other unique challenges to overcome. Standardized testing shows these schools, as one migh expect, have far poorer learning outcomes for their students, as well.

I can't tell you why your numbers appear to show otherwise, but anyone can easily verify that there is an enormous disparity between the quality of schools attended by residents of poor--often mostly Black--school districts and that attended by residents of wealthier--typically whiter--school districts.

It could be private funding that makes up the difference. Or that money is spent elsewhere (maybe more counseling, meals, etc)

Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data, assuming the data exists ave is accurate (I didn’t check).

Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data

Data can easily be used to lie or conceal, and if the observed conditions are clearly inferior, then the data is qualitatively inaccurate and/or incomplete.

Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on?

In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here.

Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While I'm sure there are anecdotes I'm dubious this could add up to enough.

I thought that in fact teacher salaries were higher in tough schools (and that, when they got sick of it, teachers would take a pay cut to teach in a nice suburb instead) but this was from conversations, and looking for data, it does look like average salaries are higher in rich areas (although for more senior teachers), and class sizes a little smaller, although I haven't dug very deep.

I agree it's a worth exploring. Just spitballing, part of it may be the cost of maintaining old buildings, particularly when changing demographics lead to over-capacity in some neighborhoods and under-capacity in others. It may also stem from financial mismanagement. There is generally less parental engagement, since poor families have more pressing concerns, so it's easier for waste or fraud to go unchecked. I don't know, none of these explanations are particularly convincing.

A lot of schools use teachers aides to support kids with special needs, like Chicago has 12k teachers, 4k special ed classroom assistants, and 3.7k special ed teachers. So like the top line teacher to student ratio may be similar to a suburban school, but I doubt that the suburban schools have that high of a ratio of special ed support staff and teachers.

https://cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Employ...

Thanks. Those are huge numbers, 40% of teaching staff who (it seems) don't count as teachers. Presumably these totals include richer & poorer parts of the city, and if it's skewed then the proportion may be even higher in the poorer bits? (Or will all the richer bits be outside Chicago school district?)

> You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning.

Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer. How many US states need air conditioning in schools? Honest question as an outsider who's never lived in an apartment with AC.

> Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer.

A very substantial share of schools either have a year round schedule or (especially for secondary schools) offer a summer session if main instruction is on a traditional schedule.

My anecdote is from Columbus, Ohio, so I'd say a lot of states do considering Columbus' latitude.

Having grown up in Cleveland and having spent plenty of time in Detroit, it is true that the school systems are in very bad condition. However, quite shockingly, they spend more per student than the nicer suburban school systems.

I don't know why this is, or how it is explained, if anyone knows I'd be all ears. It does seem like teachers get paid more in the suburbs, so that's not the reason. If I remember correctly, I saw some data suggesting that administration and building expenses are much higher, but it's hard to imagine they are getting their money's worth given the current state of things.

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