Baltimore spends more per student than Switzerland.
> As always the children of the rich and powerful get bespoke education... You could call it elegant education for a more civilized age...
Education for more affluent people is often cheaper per student. The benefit richer students have is that, on average, their parents are smarter, more conscientious, etc.
A lot of this is accounting.
You don't need to buy chromebooks for pupils when they already bring their own tablets/laptops. It's not unheard that if there is some initiative requiring equipment (music, sports, smartboards) parents fund that initiative outside tuition costs.
Private schools tend to be controlled-admission and controlled-admission schools can have much narrower variance in skill level. The "dumb" kids do not swallow attention of the teacher and the "super-smart" kids do not get neglected. Richer parents can afford private tutors, closing the gap even further. On top of that, they tend to afford more time to coach their children in the right direction.
All of that costs a small fortune, but is not visible if you compare total state funding of public schools versus admission / tuition costs.
Yup. In general the benefit of schools in richer areas is better parents, rather than better schooling itself.
Depressing, but true.
Sure, and all of that was included in my comment. It's definitely not a judgement of parents, I am one and it's incredibly difficult even with our relatively high incomes.
The top income decile in the U.S. works 10% more hours than the bottom decile. Only a bit over half of low-income kids live in a household where a parent works full time.
The fees are well over USD $150,000 a year.
Philips Exeter (Zuckerberg's school ) is a bargain by comparison at $80,000 s year .
These schools emphasis clear and analytical thinking and traditional education.
In contrast the unfortunate children of the poor are subjected to everyone technology and education trend of the moment...
Education in public schools has turned into AI slop being generated by poorly educated teachers.
Meanwhile the state sector has a lot of crumbling buildings and hand-me-down textbooks.
Public school kids still manage to screw up but they're more likely to land on their feet. Access to the upper levels in careers like law and finance is very much about "polish" (cultural identity) although working class kids sometimes gain entry, often as charity cases.
At the same time public schools used to be notorious for brutal bullying. So survivors are often emotionally traumatised and have had empathy beaten out of them.
So the facilities, textbooks, and so on were regularly vandalized, stolen, or simply destroyed. But nonetheless we had a nice gym, auditorium, track/field, and so on. We even had things like laser disc players back when that was pretty bleeding edge. In modern times I'd expect to see various luxuries like 3d printers and stuff like that even at low income schools in the US, at least if they haven't been stolen or [intentionally] broken.
If I had to choose for my children between Exeter peers at a US public school, or US public school peers at Exeter, it wouldn't be even remotely close.
[1] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/school-s...
My childhood was split between a low income district and an upper-middle-class district. Neither sets of children were likely to vandalize a goddamned thing. In the low-income district, the vibe was militaristic. We were expected to sit with backs straight and our hands folded when not writing. We moved in orderly single-file lines between classrooms and had to line up in formation outside before we were allowed recess. The education was extremely basic. The 5th grade students were barely on ‘chapter books.’ Science class was rote memorization of extremely basic physical science with no experimentation except for one class, the highlight of the year, where we each got a AA battery, two wires, ands a light bulb and had to go through a prescribed set of “experiments” where we would put the wires in various, obviously wrong configurations and finally make a circuit. Art class was still macaroni collages and music class was zero-education sing-alongs from the same song book they used in the 60s. In the upper-middle-class district we were reading Greek mythology and pulling out philosophical themes, exploring people’s emotional motivations, and exploring the historical context. Took pictures with cameras obscura that we made ourselves, made our own Leyden jars and did some very well-designed and open-ended experiments. Art was mostly graphite work from “drawing on the right side of the brain“ where we discussed things like negative space, and we made simple pottery in the school’s ceramic studio.
To imply it was the fault of the student body of that low-income school district that they might have been less engaged or have worse outcomes in life is fucking bananas. Gather more information before making these sweeping generalizations.
As for the data I've already cited the $18k spent per student which also leads to another common misconception. Low income schools receive more average public funding than high income schools, thanks to various redistributionary measures. Similarly for things like vandalism, 67% of schools report file at least one criminal report on property crime per year. [1] The most common rate is 3-5 per year, followed by 6-10 per year. And that dramatically understates the rates, because most things, as in the vastly overwhelming majority, are not criminally reported.
[1] - https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/offices/OUS/PES/studies-sc...
What your experience may reflect is more of a rural/urban divide rather than poor/rich. If you happened to live in a low income rural area with few minorities, then your public funding is going to be much less than an urban school with more minorities. You also need to account for basic cost differences, which is going to be factored into redistributionary measures. A dollar goes way further in rural areas than it does urban, which yet further reduces the amount of funding that rural areas receive. Finally schools with higher minority populations tend to have worse outcomes (higher crime, lower scores, etc) which means by the inverse you also receive less funding if you have fewer minorities.
There's even a hint of this possibility in the data. In Massachusetts, the highest poverty districts do indeed receive, by an overwhelming margin, the most funding. But the second group with high levels of 'mid poverty' receives the lowest funding amongst all 4 groups. The data doesn't specify, but I'd expect that this group is significantly comprised of rural and low minority populations.
In the US class is largely defined by current net worth. The UK seems to preference heritage and education for determining class hierarchy.
But once an empire is established it becomes largely self-sustaining, and the inheritors get a huge head start over everyone else in their cohort.
sure, because of their names.
You only attend Le Rosey for the network.
Sure, because no one (in government or school admin) wants to spend the money on more teachers. I also take issue with "poorly educated" - the teachers I know have a masters in education, but that only goes so far when you're dealing with an overcrowded and underfunded classroom.