Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

> continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes

This is so provably false that I'm amazed anyone could have this opinion. The US spends huge amounts on education. More than almost any country. Neither education spending nor property taxes have declined.

Government current expenditures: Education

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA

Personal Current Tax Receipts: State and Local Government: Property Taxes

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S210400

US education spending is one of the highest in the world, and is also increasing 2010-2019 faster than almost any country:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

View on HN

I can find plenty of sources pointing to net education spend decline relative to inflation/gdp: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/educ... https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishi... https://edlawcenter.org/research/$600-billion-lost.html

https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/most-stat... The question is not really is it increasing — but how much it has increased and whether that actually affords a quality education. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education...

(Hint: it probably has to do with the fact teaching makes very little $ in most places and is not treated as a good career in the states)

Spending on the education apparatus is not spending on the education of the child. Local teacher salaries are the same here as they've been for the past 10+ years, while the school's budget has gone up millions. Administration and overhead is a self-perpetuating growth industry. Also renovating buildings, changing standards for buses and playgrounds and such - tons of cash around educating the kids, but still, the teachers and books and such are the last to get anything.

All of that could be true yet "continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes" is nonetheless completely false. If what you say is true then we should demand that schools use their money better, not that we give them more money that they can sock into their as you call it "self-perpetuating growth industry".

Agreed on all points. I just wanted to point out that 'spending on education' in a macro sense has no actual impact on 'spending on education' from an educational impact on students and teachers sense.

In fact by the metric of "per student spending" the US is #2 in the world.

>The US spends huge amounts on education... for rich people

FTFY

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp

That is from 1996. Not sure that is why all of the sudden kids aren't attending school.

That's from 1996 and definitely not true today. The $$ numbers there are also hilariously low now. Compare them to:

https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-th...

Especially in inner cities, many of the better performing school districts spend far less than the places serving poor communities. Camden NJ is one of the highest spenders, so are a lot of city schools in Illinois. Famously "good" schools, like Stuyvesant which spends about $17,000 per student, don't even make the list. It's far below the average for NY!

A more recent report echoing similar findings: http://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-...

https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-di...

https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/upshot/biden-school-fundi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com