I've taken a close look at the numbers for individual schools in my tri-state area, (NY, NJ, PA) and from my estimate it seems that lower performing schools far and away have the highest per student budgets.
Students/families at higher performing schools have far lower need for support systems.
- in higher performing schools, parents fund a number expenses directly through a very active PTA, so those expenses don't show up in the school's official spending per pupil, while
- at lower performing schools with less active and more impoverished PTAs, those same expenses must be funded by school budgets, driving up their official per-pupil spending.
At the low performing school, the extra public funds received are often paying for support staff for serious social issues. There is little budget for the "nice to haves", and even when there is, the school staff has it's hands full managing the basics, so it's not always effectively utilized.
Sure, that's a factor too, but I'd still call it a social service issue since it ultimately results from the historical disinvestment in the communities that today have low performing schools.
There are reasons that the roofs didn't get repaired and the lead pipes didn't get replaced in those schools: because middle income people took their lives, businesses, and tax dollars out of those communities starting in the late 1960s, both by migrating to newly built suburbs, and also by ensuring their tax dollars never went toward the communities they left.
Look up the opposition to "Robin Hood" school funding from the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up it was largely about keeping suburban tax dollars out of inner-city school districts.
Blame education schools and their failing "every student can simply learn their math on their own!" approach. Total self-serving garbage, devised to cater to the ego of naïve prospective teachers and their expectation of not doing any real teaching work.
"there are substantial disparities in abortion rates in the United States, with low-income women and women of color having higher rates than affluent and White women"
People still usually prefer not to work at them, if they have options, because the work environment is terrible.
Past a certain not-that-high point, giving schools more money doesn't help them much.
There's probably some astronomically-high level of funding that would help, past some tipping point, by enabling things like single-digit class sizes, tons of social workers and counselors, extensive home-outreach programs, et c., to the point that the staff-to-student ratio is 1:5 or better, but AFAIK no-one's tried that in public schools (that's not too far off from how lots of elite private schools, operate, though, except that they don't need the army of social workers or home-outreach or any of that)
Credible threats of gang violence on a regular basis. School-wide lockdowns with some regularity due to threats of violence, or violence that has actually occurred. Admin with extremely limited options to deal with any of this, and having to triage their discipline pretty hard, plus having little to no support from home to back any of it up (this is why the stuff in the first paragraph happens constantly—no time or community/parental willpower to deal with it, given the rest of what's going on). Watching the kids suffering from the same shit day after day, plus all the usually-awful stuff they have going on at home, and not being able to do much about it. Seeing kids die or end up in the hospital with alarming regularity. Distressingly young kids plainly high or drunk in class.
Not many people can do that without burning out or giving up and half-assing everything, very quickly.
Why don't I live there, even though the location would be more convenient and has far more nearby parks and businesses, the housing is dirt-cheap, they have better access to public transit than we do, the area's more walkable/bike-able, et c? The schools are bad.
Why are the schools bad? Because people like me (that is, people whose kids have a low-stress life outside of school) won't move there. Digging out of that hole is nearly impossible. It amounts to "gentrify things all to hell" (which just shifts the problem around rather than actually solving it) or "fix huge social and economic problems the US has".
In either case, you can't do much about it by focusing on the schools themselves.
So I think by extending the current system to areas in poverty that do not have an established culture of obedience means we have to either change the system or start beating kids again imo. I vote for the former, obviously.
Even worse, imagine being a child growing up in that environment. Actual fistfights were happening every few hours in school where I grew up.
And yeah, it's a red state. Even the blue areas are red enough to get plenty of obnoxious assholes harassing teachers.
[EDIT] Downvoters: go talk to some teachers about this topic. I'll wait. It may be a while, because they'll have a lot to say.
As kids get older, they fall into drugs and / or have kids of their own and / or are told they'll never get into higher education and / or they don't need higher education, they'll just get a low skill job like everyone else in town.
Education for the sake of education really isn't strongly valued by a lot of parents, who have their own struggles and can't really help with homework much past middle school.
Compare all of this with teaching in an area that is more middle or upper class- kids are usually more eager to learn, have fewer discipline problems, and as they get older many know they need to try so they can get into a community college or university.
PS: I think putting education on such a high pedestal has demeaned the integrity and honor of working with your hands. I also believe it was a panacea given to the poor as a carrot, and is not the only way out of poverty. Hard work counts!
Basically, the students frequently don't do their homework, students would just not show up to class or outright just drop out, students misbehave more frequently (including violent behavior), parents care less (or at least act like it). The schools also tend to be in more dangerous areas. They had to lock the teachers' cars in a special lot to prevent vandalism and theft.
Basically it was demoralizing and dangerous.
I'm not saying that these things are inherently "wrong" (save the violence), only that they can't be expected to produce the same outcomes as cultures which highly value education, nuclear family, sobriety, and hard work. This holds true no matter how much money you add. Any attempt to equalize outcomes without confronting this core reason is doomed.
That and the school-to-prison pipeline are contributing to the overall problem of—at the heart of this issue—multi-generational, persistent slums. The justice system is far from the only problem, which is why I listed others and left things open-ended to account for the huge list of other things that contribute, but it's part of it. However, I don't think much can be done about it by addressing only issues with the justice system, absent broader social reforms.
Cool. I never called for that, so we're not disagreeing.
> Nor does it follow that the solutions are not found in changes to individual behaviour.
This is one of those things that's both true and useless.
I'm not sure it is useless. If the problems are individual, not systemic, then the solutions lie with individual accountability, not systemic change, right?
Certainly, the first time someone told me they had 12 kids through 8 women, with more kids on the way, I was completely shocked. Even more shocked when I realized he was bragging about his masculinity, not lamenting "What have I done?!"
> According to Amato’s research, sociologists warn that many children of single parents are born into undesirable circumstances. These children have a higher likelihood of being poor, committing crimes or using drugs. Many sociologists agree that childhood’s adverse effects outlive youth.
[1] https://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/what-are-effects-...
My grandmother would call a student's parents on their home and work numbers multiple times over multiple weeks. She would even provide her home number and say they could call anytime, day or night.
Do you think she frequently got calls back? If you can't even take 20 minutes to call your kid's teacher then you don't care about getting your kid out of an area with bad policing and justice system, racism and bad jobs.
And though they have few resources and a bad football team, the students have a chess club, robotics club, various study groups and college prep groups.
There is also a big difference in what the kids here are focused on. In SF there was so much chatter about politics, protests, gender identity, and sexuality. Out here kids just seem to be focused on studying and after school activities.
I much prefer this environment
> decadent bourgeois values
Values that produce measurably better life outcomes for participants.
> would rather do their rightful part
Refusing to participate thereby harming their own future and the community surrounding them. Or worse, actively encouraging others to reject values aligned with success.
> fighting structures of oppression and injustice
Fighting the most meritocratic system of governance we’ve had thus far in human history, whereby following values of success leads to success, whether you’re born here or elsewhere, and whatever your color, creed, or gender.
I am not sure if you’re being serious, but if you are, you should know advocating for crab bucket mentality does nothing to help the impoverished.
One of the great things about America is that we can separate ourselves into different communities and run our experiments. If your way is better you will have a better life.
I've just decided to choose a different path for my family. I truly wish you the best without sarcasm. I do hope the SF experiment succeeds, but after 20 years living there I feel, at least for me, its a total failure.