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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2904 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us

Right?

Thing of it is, I know teachers. I know tutors. I know educators and I know administrators. And the misadventure that was No Child Left Behind exacerbated the problem and the whiplash of Common Core isn't fixing it. If I had the ability to make it better for everybody I would. Knew a guy who spent half a day every week being the science teacher for whatever class his daughter was in; he'd work with the teacher, buy the supplies, come up with a curriculum and volunteer 10% of his work week to be Bill Nye, effectively. And I admire the fuck out of the sentiment and I won't say a single bad thing about the guy but it shouldn't come to that, you know?

Education is so much more political than educators want to admit and it's been losing for decades. Even the glorious misadventure that was my high school is no more; about a year after I left the Cartels moved in and it got gutted by black tar heroin. Meanwhile everybody that wears black and listens to Marilyn Manson is probably going to take a shotgun to the gym one fine day so you can't even be a reasonable miscreant, despite the metal detector.

I know my kid would rip ass in public school. I know she'd get an "education." But I also know that the people who will be buying and selling everyone else won't be in class with her unless I fuckin' pay for it because that's the way the world runs.





blackbootz  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You had mentioned somewhere previously that the never-in-a-zillion-years solution to this might be to stop anchoring school district funding to local property taxes, but instead pool property taxes nationally and provide for an egalitarian education that way.

And the reason, as you said, that that will never happen? Politics. And while do-gooders and well-wishers us all will continue to decry the sorry state of things around us, no sense in not setting up our progeny to receive the very best education, which happens now to be at a private institutions.

kleinbl00  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not my idea. Elizabeth Warren's. She wrote a book about it more than a decade ago.

But then, she's a marxist/socialist/anarchist/whatever so who cares what she thinks.

snoodog  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The idea has an implied association that there is a very good correlation between money spent on education and outcomes. I don't think that's necessarily true I found conflicting data that seems to imply we dont have a really good way to compare school systems. A lot of the money is simply wasted on stupid shit like "technology", Ipads, administrators and non common text books.

Also im going to take a soft stab at you and point out that if $spent per pupil is highly correlated with outcomes this program would benefit people like you that send their kids to private school by decreasing the pool of potential viable high performing competitors. (More people in the middle less on the edges where they can compete with private schools). I dont think that's what you were thinking of when you brought up the idea but I figured it would be worth mentioning.

Ref:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ Would imply poor correlation but i think their methodology is fucked

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/15/247-wall-st-states-best-schools/21388041/ would imply pretty good correlation.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/15/247-wall-st-states-best-schools/21388041/ medium good correlation

kleinbl00  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The idea has an implied association that there is a very good correlation between money spent on education and outcomes.

It doesn't, actually. It implies that when a school district's funding is determined by its property taxes, the wealthy will congregate in wealthy school districts while the poor will be marginalized into impoverished ones. Further, that pursuit of decent education becomes transformed into the pursuit of pricy real estate which further drives the stratification of education and society.

I'm not going to go toe-to-toe on four links that refute an argument I didn't make. I linked to a book; you wanna attack "me", read the book.

snoodog  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That makes more sense I guess I would have to go read the book to see what data she uses to support that argument. I always assumed wealthy people congregated in the same area even if that wasn't the case due to the safety, prestige and networking aspect but I could be wrong.

kleinbl00  ·  2903 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a hell of a book, actually - she makes the argument that the middle class crush is a whole bunch of unintentional externalities, and then lays out what they are and why.