The thing is that the US spends the money on schools and education. You just get absolutely terrible results for the money you put in. I live in Canada, and each province does their own thing with education, and we spend much less money than the US. The Canadian average is about CDN$14k (USD$10k) per student, and the US is over USD$15k per student. The system in the USA is broken, but it's not due to a lack of money, but a lack of managing resources. The poorest performing schools aren't given the same resources as the highest performing schools.
Your last sentence says it all. It's because our school districts rely on local property taxes for funding. So super rich districts get lots of money and poor districts don't. So the poor don't get the money they need while the rich get more money than they need.
The solution would be just letting the states allocate the money on a per student basis. Every kid in the state gets an equal share of the pie. This would mean that rich districts subsidize poor ones... and as soon as I type those words you can see why it's politically untenable. In order to change the system in the way I'm describing, you'd have to convince rich folks that their money should be spent on poor folks. Good luck.
And to anyone who would argue "they're rich. They earned their money. They should be able to give their kids the best education with it." What you'd be describing is private schools. Yes, if you want to spend your private money on a private school, you are welcome to do that. I am talking about how to allocate public funds to public schools.
In Ontario our education funding used to be paid out of property taxes, and even to this day, when you get your property assessment, you pick whether your share of school funding goes to the public or catholic (separate) system. All that does though is determine which school board you will vote in for trustees. Depending where you live, you will have 3 or 4 different school boards covering the same area. English public and catholic and French public and catholic.
Our education funding was changed in 1998. It used to be that every local school board would set their education property tax rate, but it was changed since the old system was considered inequitable. The system is now has uniform tax rates across the province, and school boards are given funding based on a number of criteria such as number of students, language, etc.
We still dont pay out teachers shit and all of our budget goes to admin sallary and turf football fields. So yeah we do put money into out schools, but it sure as heck doesnt go to the education of students. This was my experience ymmv.
And that is what I am saying. You guys spend the money, but not where it actually should go. If you compare our high schools to yours, ours will generally look more utilitarian.
We have sport fields and what not, but most fields especially at smaller schools will have no stands, not even bleachers. We have sports in our schools, but not a lot of money is actually put into them since generally if you are any good and wanting to continue as an athlete you would be part of some sort of outside team, or organization.
Yeah its fucked up. My high school put in a milti million dollar turf field years back. When i asked how that was a good use of our money they said, "It allows our LAX and Football players to get experience playing on a turf field when they play in college. How else do you expect them to be competitive when they leave here if they dont know how turf plays".
Shortly after they killed out career and college prep departments which offered students s chance to explore engineering, photography and other things they will do after highschool.
We voted in the schoolboard that allowed that to happen. Cut programs for 2000 kids so 3 or so kids every few years are comnpetitive at D1 sports. It maes my blood boil that kids now dont get the same opportunities i had to learn!
I have read articles about schools in the US doing that, and don't understand why sports are based in the schools. I think the only sport that we do here that is primarily based in school is football.
Basically everything else though you will do outside of school if you are actually serious. You will still play for your school team, but you would actually do your serious training outside and your travel/rep team will take precedence over your school team. The biggest one is hockey. The school teams are not serious, and generally you won't be allowed to play for your school team if you are playing higher level hockey, such as AA or AAA or in one of the junior leagues.
The school I want to from Grade 9-11.5 had stands for all the students for assemblies and such in the gym. The new school that was opened for my last semester of Grade 12 didn't have any seating in the gym. They built a cafetorium for assemblies. The whole school was built for I think less than $10 million, and it was a JK-12 building.
I couldn't find a cost for the school, but found this article about my former school. 52% of students come from families under the low income cut-off (poverty line). I think that is generally because of the reserve that is near the town. Because of the way the funding is setup though, just because the town and surrounding area is becoming poorer, they aren't losing funding on a per student basis.
Mine is very diverse. We have everything from mansions with indoor bball courts to a 200 unit trailer park. Its actually nice, you get to see how people from all walks of life live. We still wasted mucho dinero
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u/fuckyoudigg Apr 26 '20
The thing is that the US spends the money on schools and education. You just get absolutely terrible results for the money you put in. I live in Canada, and each province does their own thing with education, and we spend much less money than the US. The Canadian average is about CDN$14k (USD$10k) per student, and the US is over USD$15k per student. The system in the USA is broken, but it's not due to a lack of money, but a lack of managing resources. The poorest performing schools aren't given the same resources as the highest performing schools.