This is the whole problem. That money (and more!) should be going to public schools to fix them. We should all want great public schools everywhere. An educated populace is the only way we as a country can grow and improve.
While I agree, the rot in the metro area schools runs so deep its going to take decades to get the progressive ideology out of them. My kids have gone to public schools their whole lives, but we live in the suburbs where the focus has always been on preparing kids for higher education and being prepare to find a successful career after college.
Public schools? When the cost per student is double that of my kids school and their graduation rate is hovering in the 60% range with less than 50% attending college? THAT is a huge problem. And what happens every year? Those same schools cry and whine they need MORE money to fix the problem. And every year the state allocates MORE money to them and every year NOTHING improves. And yet, its a constant cycle while the suburban schools continue to thrive while those metro area schools and their residents? They're trapped, like my sister and her three kids were.
What's the solution for them? They yank their kids out and send them instead to a private school whose focus is education, not indoctrinating them into some progressive ideology. The other problem is families won't wait around for ten years and wait for the problem to be fixed. They have a very narrow window in which to change things for their kids. Like my sister did, they're going to find somewhere else to send their kids and do that.
I 100% agree with your comment, but I feel the metro area schools are so entrenched and so far beyond being repaired, the best course is to make private schools more affordable, as opposed to spending decades trying to undo what these schools have done.
is there actually any evidence more money would fix public schools? Urban school districts as far as I know have more money than the suburbs and worse outcomes as reflected in standardized test scores.
Students who commit or are accepted into 2 sand 4 year colleges: 90%+
- Compare that with just one school in the urban school system:
Cost per student: $37K/year
Graduation rate: 57%
Students who commit or are accepted into 2 sand 4 year colleges: less than 50%
Just to throw some more fire on this, the teachers in the last two years in those urban districts? They've gotten substantial raises and large increases in spending from the state legislature. The last standardized test results post C19? The kids in those schools were forced into lengthy closures during C19 and were the last schools to re-open (months after all the suburban schools had already been open with in person attendance) amounted to their students REGRESSING by multiple percentage points.
So no, after watching this first hand with myself and my sisters kids who were yanked out of an urban public school as freshman; urban students and schools receive considerably more than their suburban counterparts and are still lagging significantly behind them.
That's an anecdote, no? No idea where you live (guessing New Jersey?). But do you think there might be other differences beyond just the $/student that might explain some of those differences? What're the poverty levels of those urban children vs their suburban counterparts?
Its Minnesota. The numbers were off to from the last time I checked them.
Its now 13K for my kids school and 26K for the Minneapolis schools.
>> But do you think there might be other differences beyond just the $/student that might explain some of those differences?
Well yeah.
- Poor families can't afford to send their kids to private schools.
- Poor families don't have any vouchers or charter schools as alternatives
- Poor families cannot be bused to other, better school districts like mine or other suburban schools
- Most poor families are single parent homes which means driving kids to far off suburban schools is not an option
- Many suburban schools are closing their enrollment unless you live in the district now.
The educational SYSTEM is what keeps poor families without any options to give their kids a better shot at being educated and going on to a 2 year or 4 year college. When you have no options, then you're stuck. This makes no sense to me why this is a political issue. Don't you want kids to have the best opportunity to be successful? Why not open up to vouchers and charter schools? Why does the Minneapolis school system refuse to allow this? The answer is too obvious to require elaboration. Its because their enrollment (which has already dropped precipitously over the last decade) would drop off even more. This would then mean lose a ton of funding from the state.
At the end of the day, the MPS does not want competition because it means less money then from the state, even with the abysmal graduation rate, falling enrollment and tens of thousands of people moving out of the Hennepin County, they continue to refuse to change anything - which is pretty depressing when you think about it.
In my region the city's one massive school district has more money than any single suburban one, obviously. But funding per student is generally higher in the suburbs, and outcomes are better there as well. So I'm sure there are other factors but there is at least some evidence that more money would help.
The problem is Eumenes wants his school to be funded by everyone else's property tax.
When did this entitlement mindset grip this country so much that people openly ask for handouts like that? I know I will sound old now, but back in the 70's and 80's welfare was a bad thing. Now, everyone from corporations to private schools openly demand it.
> The problem is Eumenes wants his school to be funded by everyone else's property tax.
Where did I say that? I said it'd be nice if one could route their state/property taxes to school of their choice. That seems pretty dang fair. Taxation without representation doesn't.
That sounds cool. I bet people without kids wouldn’t direct their taxes to any schools. Or maybe they don’t support the police. Can you imagine the craziness of trying to create a budget for your community where everyone gets to direct their tax dollars? Then if you rent I guess you’re just stuck with what your landlord decides too.
I don't know how things are funded in your neck of the woods, but if I were to take the county property tax that's allocated to my local school district and use it to pay for private schooling for a child, it probably wouldn't cover a quarter of classes, much less everything else involved in sending a child to a private school.
Lol I was talking to a friend who is a web dev and works for a large company in the social gaming space. He referred to the "Civility" team which is just censorship and content moderation, plus sending mental health notifications if you've been playing/spending too much. I'd rather dig holes or shovel shit over working for a mobile game companies "civility" team.
Many companies explicitly and publicly state these policies. The government does this too. It’s explicitly discriminatory and should be illegal. For private companies it is illegal.
America's poor use EBT/food stamps to buy massive amounts of junk food, including billions on soda. Those same people are almost 100% on ACA or state health insurance plans and milking the tax payer on treatment for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. There is no way, in my mind, it is feasible to fund these lifestyles and provide the treatment for it. Its absolutely insane.
Do they? Food stamps in most states have restrictions on what you can buy with them. My impression is soda is not on the list. Of course this is (mostly?) the states and every state has different rules so you probably need to cite 50 different state rules to verify this and thus an exception state is likely.
Okay, now apply those guidelines to vulnerable members of society who purchase groceries via EBT/food stamps. I don't think soda, ultra processed foods, or candy would count?
I don’t think the healthy aspect affects eligibility food stamps. As I recall soda makes up 10% or more of all food stamp spending and the manufacturing have repeatedly successfully lobbied to keep sodas on there.
