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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

>Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low

This is a common myth but it's not backed up by the numbers. Poverty is (mostly) concentrated in inner cities and those inner cities typically contain large office builds which pay lots of real estate taxes but send no kids to schools. If you look around different states the highest per pupil spending is by far in the cities. As an example, Atlanta public schools spends $15k per pupil while the surrounding suburban counties are 8-10k per pupil.

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that's interesting to hear, and I'll have to take your word on it for now, but I'm curious why(unless things have significantly changed in the past 6-7 years) inner-city schools are still horrendously bad. I've experienced schools in both the worst parts of Philadelphia as well as in middle-class suburbs of Philly, and the contrast is even more exaggerated than they make it seem on TV shows/movies that depict these types of schools.

Obviously the students who are raised in these high-crime areas and surrounded by a community that's significantly harsher are going to be harder for teachers to manage, and I do think this is a very big part of it, but there are some things that clearly aren't related to that(such as equipment and the quality/quantity of staff)

What we think of as school quality is mostly the quality of the students. Richer districts have, on average, students of high SES with parents that are more willing & able to help their kids succeed in school. Poorer districts have, on average, lower SES kids with terrible living situations and parents.

Having disruptive kids also makes educating them much more expensive. Discipline issues chew up a lot of resources and disrupt learning for other students. So you have to spend more to provide equal quality instruction.

And, of course, just because they spend more money doesn't mean they spend it on things that help educating students.

Perhaps the people should provide the teachers /school with more ways to punish disruption. Let schools expel and suspend disruptive students. Don't let bad actors hurt the rest. But from what I've heard, they do the opposite.

> I'm curious why [...] inner-city schools are still horrendously bad.

I encourage you to follow this train of thought. It may bring into question some fundamental assumptions in one's world view.

"Poverty is (mostly) concentrated in inner cities..."

False. (https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/20...)

Atlanta Public Schools, per student: $16,402, $8,923 instructional

Fulton County Schools, $11,619, $7,021 instructional

Buford City Schools, $11,299, $7,271 instructional

Douglas County, $10,271, $6,577 instructional

Clayton County, $10,472, $6,379 instructional

State Charter Schools- Georgia Cyber Academy, $6,294, $5,224 instructional

This is fun! https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolmap/

>False.(https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/20...)

You're looking at county levels. If you look at the parts of cities with poor schools they will have nearly 100% of their students in poverty.

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