Comment by NoGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoGravitas | Hacker News Reader

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I think the problem with that analysis of the problem is that education spending in the US is highly unequal. Some school districts spend much more than necessary, while some don't have the funding to afford textbooks or safe school buildings. The main cause of this is that schools are funded by local property taxes, which depend on local house values and local incomes. Poor areas can't afford good schools, which makes it harder for kids raised in those areas to escape from poverty. Consider the Corridor of Shame: http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/south-carolina-schools/

It may well be the case that US aggregate education spending is plenty high – but unless it were centrally collected and equitably distributed (taking into account differences in cost of living, cost of real-estate, etc.) to produce equivalent average outcomes, that's not really relevant.

No, this isn't true, though it's a common misunderstanding. Most school districts receive funding from the state.

Generally, the underperforming schools spend more per student. For example, Stuyvesant, the premier math/science high school in New York, is among other lowest of public high schools in spending per student.

Underperforming schools typically have higher costs, like ESL and special needs courses, free lunch, police presence, though.

They've tried this with under-performing schools (typically in urban areas). Throwing money at a problem doesn't make it magically go away. What works is breaking up the school and divvying up the students/teachers among schools that aren't under-performing.

AKA dispersing concentrated poverty so that no one part of the system is overwhelmed.

At least in CA, and probably other liberal states, you have what is ironically called the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that distributes funding equally, more or less, and tries to erase these advantages.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/

this isn't really true. the difference in funding from property tax is smoothed out (or more!) at the state level in most US states. some of the poorest school districts (eg, baltimore) have the highest funding per student. they still produce abysmal outcomes.

I think the distribution of good teachers and parents ability to devote time to the children have at least as large a role. The latter driving the former. I would think better teachers would tend to gravitate towards areas where they get support from the parents and the parents ensure homework is done, etc. This is just my opinion.

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