In many ways the pandemic response was in line with the norm: rich kids do just fine, poorer kids are mostly ignored.
What countries fund education better per capita than the US? Can you give numbers?
According to various sources, for example https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp , US per-student K-12 education funding is only behind four OECD countries: Switzerland, Austria, and Norway (and far behind Luxembourg, which is an outlier).
The US is ahead of highly developed peer countries like Ireland and Belgium, and *way* ahead of the OECD average.
Meta-point: It irritates me when people assume the problem with US education is low spending, because the US education system is obviously so bad that that must be true, when in reality the problem is much more complex.
In my experience the people who believe this never have numbers at hand; they are just shooting from the hip.
Right. Are you agreeing with me? Is this not my entire point?
> Huge sums spent on school security/meals/transportation
Any numbers on what fraction of school budgets these typically are?
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY-2022-Supe...
Or you're saying that no amount of money can replace a caring parent?
Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to cost of living (75k+ USD) and supplies were never lacking. Spectacular outcomes for most students provided a stable home environment (92% of students going on to college).
The US public educational system isn't bad, it isn't good, it's nonexistant. It's a conglomeration of dozens of educational systems receiving some amount of money from the Federal government but more or less operating on their own. Given that, what we should be asking is what are we failing to provide our students outside of classrooms.
My observations are mostly from CPS in Chicago-land so take that into consideration. The issue, and a glaring one at that, is that no one with money will let their kid go to public school if they can help it regardless of official political positions they hold, which tells you something.
To me that says that for those schools, education is not the goal.
Naturally, it is not all their fault. There are sorts of issues that are socio-economic in nature ( how much time a parent can devote to reading aloud to a child? can they hire a tutor? ).
I don't think I completely agree that we should focus on external factors only ( although we should look into them ). I am saying we should understand where that money disappears into. My house taxes are ridiculous and the statement I get suggests its mostly for schools. Where exactly is it going if it is not having appropriate results?
Areas with poor people in them also gather less tax money, meaning they can't provide the residents with quality education, meaning those areas perpetuate poverty.
Is this something that is being discussed on a wider policy level? I believe it's a universally agreed upon fact that the quality of primary education is the single most important factor in helping people escape poverty. This should work equally well in rural Nigeria, suburban Oslo and West Baltimore.
It's not. The people actually running things like it that way.
The differences arising from living in a poorer district vs a richer district have more to do with factors outside of school, like I said. It has to do with the home environments provided by parents who are often much poorer and thus less able to provide care and tutoring outside of school. Less access to role models that can guide the way to getting to college and upward mobility. As our country's economy becomes increasingly competitive, these disadvantages ossify socioeconomic statuses for people and their offspring.
Obviously, more oversight of funds is a good thing, but it really isn't a lack of money that leads to these problems (for the most part).
Edit: Also, a poorer district usually has lower cost of living to weigh against lower property taxes.
Edit: There are 3142 “counties and county equivalents” in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_by_U.S._state...
Economy depends on productivity and innovation. Who would've thought that the people like Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg and Ellison would create so much wealth and so many jobs without college degree. Robust US economy enabled them bringing their innovation to fruition but I'm afraid if they lived in another country they wouldn't be able to do that. Of course every country depends on higher education but sometimes creativity can outperform formal education.
I think public vs private is irrelevant because if you are productive as a worker or innovative as a entrepreneur result is the only thing that counts.
Gates: Private Prep school, Harvard
Zuckerberg: Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard
Ellison: South Shore HS (Publicly funded, selective enrollment), UIUC
It really is more egalitarian then you might think over here.
School funding comes from property taxes, so the wealthier the area, the better the schools. Schools also do not address the myriad of other issues that arise from what class a child is born into in the US.
Wealthy parents can afford childcare, or to stay home with the child, and can afford tutors if their kids have trouble in school, etc. Wealthy parents can afford to pay for their children's college education, give their kids' good credit by making them authorized users of the parents' credit cards before they're 18, pay their rent or buy them homes, and pay their bills or give them money should they decide to start their own businesses, make investments, or pursue new careers or the arts.
Poor parents aren't at home to send their kids to school in the morning or to be there when they get back because they're working, and they can't afford tutors if their kids are struggling. Kids often have to work jobs in high school and give the money they earn to their parents to pay for housing and expenses, and they are on their own when it comes to college, moving out, or pursuing a career. Even when they're out of the house, they may still have to help financially support their parents, siblings and extended family.
There are also the issues of food and housing insecurity that stem from poverty, and they have an impact on children's ability to learn, cope and move up from their station in life.
This is why liberal think tanks have shifted the goal posts to “equitable funding”: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school... (“ Someone expecting to find widespread evidence of “savage inequalities” will be pleasantly surprised to learn that, on average, poor students attend schools that are at least as well-funded as their more advantaged peers... But there are good reasons to believe that it is more expensive to provide the same quality of education to disadvantaged children—in other words, funding that is equal may not be equitable.“).
Which, to be fair, I don’t think is a flawed idea. If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap, we can have the conversation that poor kids actually need more money to even out inequalities.
Good teachers are and administrators are only in for a few years before they're up and out and there's all sorts of perverse incentives to just do the minimum while punching the clock.
The afterlife may last for a few minutes for all we know.
While I do agree with you that not everything neccesarily needs to be looked at and judged quantitatively, the deep dive into esoteric ideas such as the afterlife is misplaced.
The vast difference is that rich kids had many other avenues for learning and some may even have progressed more quickly freed from the tyrannically slow pace of in-person schooling.
In California, apparently teacher's unions have been blocking school opening plans. That's what I read and it could just be false or misleading news.
Again, rich people afford private schools, tutors, etc.
In contrast, in France they just went under lockdown in the north this weekend, yet for many months now they had schools open. In the US we're opening up but schools stay closed in many places. Who's being scientific and who's being political?
Nothing makes much sense! We must question authority and special interest groups, constantly. Take nothing for granted, even if a politician claims to be on the side of science.
Sure, the "rich" families can afford private school tuition; but even just well-off families are better able to handle the at home school situation. They are more likely to have flexible schedules or work from home arrangements that allow them to properly supervise their children's learning - which I hypothesize that this better being able to supervise remote learning, is a much bigger driver of divergent outcomes than the fairly small number of private school pupils.
In the suburban district my nephews attend, parents double down on sports and refuse to let kids take standardized tests to make them look as good as possible. It’s monsterous.