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Comment by abirch | Hacker News Reader

> This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes, school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets, in inverse proportion to property taxes, so that racial differences in per-pupil funding are negligible:

This is not my experience. I chose a more expensive house with higher taxes because the schools are better. They are better funded than those in the surrounding areas. Sure the Federal Government gives free meals but my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new.

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> my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new

There's plenty of evidence that parental attitudes are a big factor:

"Middle-class pupils do better because parents and schools put more effort into their education, according to a study [..] factors studied were the parents' interest in their children's education, measured by, for example, whether they read to their children or attended meetings with teachers"[0]

(Full disclosure: my wife and I read - and have read - to our kids almost every single night)

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/oct/29/middle-cla...

We no longer read to our kids, and it makes me both happy and sad. Happy because they are voracious readers on their own, but sad because damn, childhood goes by quick...

Reading to my two-year-old every naptime/bedtime is one of my favorite parts of parenting. Appreciate this comment reminding me to really enjoy these precious moments!

Check out Numberblocks from the BBC. My kindergartner found it while she was in Pre-K and learned multiplication and division on her own.

Much of our intelligence is from our parents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

I'm just stating that my kids' elementary school is nicer than those in our county and definitely from my hometown. They do receive a lot more money than what my hometown spent.

> Check out Numberblocks from the BBC

Heh, our daughter (who doesn't start school until September) knows all the Numberblocks and Alphablocks episodes...

Having done a similar analysis myself, here is what I found. Schools in wealthier areas have better results primarily because the support system at home is much stronger. I.e. A wealthy family's kids do better in school no matter where they go. Another factor, mostly in elementary school, is that wealthier areas get noticeably more volunteer activity from parents.

State & local funding is less important, by far.

Many of the higher end schools in the area here (Bay Area) require volunteer fundraising, bake sales, volunteer time contribution, etc. precisely because property taxes aren’t enough and they get less than the other schools.

And the parents do it because they can (they have the ability to get the time off), and because they know it’s important in many ways.

I think sometimes we are quick to discount the affect that home life has on children's school performance. Part of the reason school's are better in wealthy areas is because children in wealthy areas tend to have better home life than children in poor areas.

What about differences in teacher salary? All of my kids' teachers have been superb. I agree with you that the outcomes of wealthy areas would be better due to many reasons outside of schools.

You can conclude from this that the schools are not better because of funding differences. You can try to come up with other reasons why this might be so, but don't point to funding.

The fact that my school provides chromebooks (while other schools in the same county do not) seems to be from a funding perspective. I'm not focusing on outcomes because I would expect people who can afford homes in my town can afford tutors and other resources.

Teachers in my town make ~10% more than in the schools that are two towns over in a predominantly minority town.

>my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new.

It's interesting to me that you are using this as a proxy for funding.

Schools in low income areas are going to have crappier books and laptops because they're spending their money on things other than books and laptops.

Low income brings with it all sorts of problems. That's why it sucks to be poor.

>I chose a more expensive house with higher taxes because the schools are better.

The schools are better, but if you look at per pupil spending I'm willing to bet it's not due to spending. Typically the worst schools get the most most money from federal and state sources, far outstripping any differences in property taxes.

Better schools are a function of better parental involvement, everything else is a distant second.

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