One more reason local funding for public schools needs to change.

[Fedorable]

yea, cool deflection, bro.


Finland obv has more $ than America to do such grande things.....


what a silly notion. the $ is obviously there. its just what are your priorities?? look at the budget, its not education. edcuation is a $ making racket in America.

there's always a Mr. Finland. I thought Finland was declining in education with the added diversity? 5 million people in Finland also makes it easier in a ton of different ways.

 

[Blackened]

Yeah, they can. That is, if they can get past the bar. And you're right about it being predatory on people who are just not very intelligent and either cannot realize it or are in denial about it. I'm sure there is a small sliver of folks who have learning disadvantages like severe dyslexia that are capable but just underachieve on the LSAT, which is pretty rigid as far as accommodations go, but that's certainly not the standard.

Anyways, being a solo practitioner and making a living as such can be very difficult. You generally will either need huge expenditures on advertising, huge expenditures on firm location, referrals, or a very particular market like an under-served small town (or, most likely, a combination thereof).

As someone who tortured myself taking out $90,000 to go to a better school than ones who were offering full-tuition, it just blows my mind that anyone could take out that kind of loan without close scrutiny.

Your telling me man. One of my friends decided in his mid 20's to go back to school. He wanted to go for engineering. I said, "yeah man, go to a community college, transfer to university".

He went on and on about ECPI. His argument was "I just want the piece of paper. It's 3 years instead of the 4.5 with other engineering programs." I told him, it's gotta be a shit program if you only take one course in calculus and 2 in physics (Engineering majors take up to partial differential).

Needless to say, after a year of school there he figured it out and dropped out.

 

[elmo_1968]

They should kick more students out.

There are students who deserve to be kicked out, and there are ones who just aren't that into it. Many private schools avoid both.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Then why the fuck haven't democrat mayors, city councils, etc done this ?

They have the power to change it yet it never seems to change?

Why?

This is a complicated question because every state and municipality is playing by different rules.

In PA for example schools are funded with a mixture of the state budget and local real estate taxes.

Obviously more affluent areas are going to have more funding since they have more valuable real estate and the people that can afford to pay those real estate taxes are the affluent.

Philadelphia for example has a lot of people living in poverty and can't generate the revenue the surrounding areas can.

Philly has also been trying to grow the city by offering tax abatements in the hopes of keeping the high income earners that went to college here. But it's hard to keep people in the city when the school system is inadequate.

They always try and plug the gap with sales/cigarette/soda taxes but those effect the poor more than anyone else and they aren't steady streams of revenue and tend to hurt local businesses. Also the city has to get permission from the sate for any of these tax adjustments.

Only the sate can change the funding formula and that gets really tricky.

People paying high real estate taxes in Doylestown don't like sharing their money with North Philly since the main reason they live in Doylestown and pay high real estate taxes is for the school. So if you start sharing hose real estate taxes and get equal funding and education throughout he state why would hey live in Doylestown and voluntarily pay those high taxes?

 

[PolishHeadlock]

You know whats far more important?

A community that respects and values education.
Look at India to see less than perfect setting producing impressive results.


You know whats a far bigger problem than anything you mentioned?

The behavior of students in the inner city schools you mention, and the inability of the schools to discipline the students, and the parents not giving a sh@t.

So what's the plan to fix the education gap besides telling people they should respect education? Has that approach worked?

There are few better investments of tax dollars than early education especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown...on-says-a-nobel-economist-who-boosts-kids-iq/

 

[panamaican]

Then why the fuck haven't democrat mayors, city councils, etc done this ?

They have the power to change it yet it never seems to change?

Why?

Because changing school funding would take place at the state level, not the city or even county level. Plus it would be a legislative change and the would require a majority vote from the legislature.

I don't think it's a D or R thing. I think it's simple self-interest. Your state level politicians are likely to come from or rely on donations from wealthier enclaves within the states they represent. It's a hard sell to tell your better off neighbors that you're going to restructure school funding such that their children's school get less while some low income schools will get more.

That's before you address the reality that a big part of property values are tied to perceptions of the local schools. Changing how the funding works might have negative consequences on property values in the long term.

It's a hard sell. It's hard to envision parents willingly voting to redistribute education cash more equitably if they're on the "getting less" side.

 

[Islam Imamate]

Because changing school funding would take place at the state level, not the city or even county level. Plus it would be a legislative change and the would require a majority vote from the legislature.

I don't think it's a D or R thing. I think it's simple self-interest. Your state level politicians are likely to come from or rely on donations from wealthier enclaves within the states they represent. It's a hard sell to tell your better off neighbors that you're going to restructure school funding such that their children's school get less while some low income schools will get more.

That's before you address the reality that a big part of property values are tied to perceptions of the local schools. Changing how the funding works might have negative consequences on property values in the long term.

It's a hard sell. It's hard to envision parents willingly voting to redistribute education cash more equitably if they're on the "getting less" side.

You think there's any way to craft this legislation so that its more palatable to the wealthier enclaves? You live in a nice neighborhood, what concessions could be made to you and your neighbors to make this transition easier?

 

[panamaican]

How much do kids really need in order to learn? There are kids in the world who go to school in shacks and use pencils, papers and a few textbooks and many of them are better educated than the schools getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding.

You do not need much more than pencils, paper, textbooks, a caring teacher, effort and a will to learn in order to receive a good educated.

Uhm, so your argument is that since kids can learn in shacks then all kids should learn in shacks?

Because otherwise I'm not sure what it matters what kids in other parts of the world are doing. I'm referring to the impact of how we fund education in this country and how it puts poor children at an automatic disadvantage relative to well-to-do children. A problem when you are referring to a public good...which is what public education is. Balancing the availability of the public good is my point.

If we reduced all kids to attending 1 room school houses with a local school marm it would still serve my point so long as the publicly funded school marms and school houses are equitably distributed.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

You think there's any way to craft this legislation so that its more palatable to the wealthier enclaves? You live in a nice neighborhood, what concessions could be made to you and your neighbors to make this transition easier?

I think you can start off by showing the benefits of it.

Better education in poor neighborhoods leads to less crime and government dependency. You spend money now in the short term to invest in people in the long term. It's the best way to combat generational welfare dependence and crime.

 

[panamaican]

I've had my kids in both private and public schools, I myself have attended both private and public schools, the private schools will have better students with some caveats.

it's not even close in my district, and it's about as close to apples and apples comparison with schools only a 1/4 mile apart. One is the worst public school in the district, and the other an above average private school.

I'm not arguing with your personal experience or your perception of that experience.

I'm simply telling you that the people who've actually researched this across the nation have found that public and private school outcomes are pretty much identical with 2 exceptions - elite college prep schools and Jesuit schools.

What happens is that when kids who would have excelled at the public school level attend private school, the parents attribute the outcomes to the private school. In reality, the kid would have performed equally well in public. But since the parents are spending the cash, they are primed to believe that their choice is what made the difference...otherwise they'd feel like they wasted the money.

 

[Ruprecht]

Change funding-Absolutely. Increase funding-No. The US spends more $ per student than any country in the world by some distance.

Source? I'm pretty sure you're including tertiary education there. US spending isn't as high for primary and secondary. Also, as you mentioned, the US spends a bigger proportion of its student budget on aspects not directly related to educational resources. Like security...

 

[panamaican]

You think there's any way to craft this legislation so that its more palatable to the wealthier enclaves? You live in a nice neighborhood, what concessions could be made to you and your neighbors to make this transition easier?

Sadly, I haven't come up with anything. In my opinion, it's not the wealthy enclaves that would be the biggest obstacle. Those people are likely already in elite prep schools or shelling out for extensive "afterschooling". Plus they're not a large enough voting block to really block change.

It's middle and upper middle class plus the aspirational that would resist change. And they are a large enough voting block to prevent things they don't agree with. They make enough money that they can pick where to live based on schools and willingly shoulder the increased tax burden. But they don't make enough for the elite prep schools to make economic sense.

This is where i think things like free public universities and other systemic changes to how we educate people start to matter. Because just on the surface, no one is going to support this change if it impacts their kids. You're going to have to change how people perceive access to the rewards for education. I think programs like those that guarantee college admissions for the top 10% of every high school make a difference. Suddenly attending school in a poorer neighborhood might increase your odds of getting into college.

 

[cooks1]

Good point about the secondary spending. But even when you just look at k-12 we are still at the very top and are spending way more than countries that are shellacking us. We don't need to spend more, we need to spend, allocate and execute BETTER.

http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd

 

[cooks1]

Source? I'm pretty sure you're including tertiary education there. US spending isn't as high for primary and secondary. Also, as you mentioned, the US spends a bigger proportion of its student budget on aspects not directly related to educational resources. Like security...

Good point about the secondary education. But even K-12 we are at the very top and spending way more than countries that are shellacking us. We do not need to spend more, we need to spend, allocate, and execute BETTER.

http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd

 

[HunterSdVa29]

people keep bringing up bldgs, when i was under the impression the problem w/ inner city schools is perhaps older books, poor student to teacher ratios especially. Take college for instance, i was in the Honors Program, one of the main selling pts being smaller classes. There's a pretty big difference between a class of 15, and an auditorium of 300. you can't even logistically conduct the same types of instruction in classes that different in size/scope

then you add in psychological shit like people being scared to ask questions in bigger crowds, more distractions around you, etc....

 

[Ruprecht]

Good point about the secondary education. But even K-12 we are at the very top and spending way more than countries that are shellacking us. We do not need to spend more, we need to spend, allocate, and execute BETTER.

http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd

Interesting. The figures I linked to are from 2014, but still supposedly in PPP, and show the US ranked lower in Primary and Secondary spending. Have you had K-12 funding cuts over the last few year? Although it's still way above the majority of countries whose educational systems out perform it (to the degree that's quantifiable, they seem to rank the US around 14th).

 

[cooks1]

Interesting. The figures I linked to are from 2014, but still supposedly in PPP, and show the US ranked lower in Primary and Secondary spending. Have you had K-12 funding cuts over the last few year? Although it's still way above the majority of countries whose educational systems out perform it (to the degree that's quantifiable, they seem to rank the US around 14th).

Fair point, and different sources will have some variances. We should not let that distract us from the larger issue though that the US spends plenty on K-12 education. Plenty. We just spend it way, way worse than any other country. Our mindset is the sames as almost everything else. Create jobs. Put $ in the economy. It should be to maximize value for our most valuable resource (children). We need the overwhelming majority of our investment to be at the sharp end of the operation (stuff for kids and money for teachers). Right now it's inverted. WAAYYY too top heavy. Right now the US BOE has 5000 employees. That number should be closer to 500 than 5000.

And probably every school board in the country should be 1/5 it's current size. Those resources need to flow back to the schools to get more shit for students and a better adult to kid ratio in the schools.

Then you just quit restricting people and let me money follow the student. The cream will rise to the top. Good models thrive, shitty ones die.

 

[woodguyatl]

Actually, private schools don't outperform public schools when it comes to student perforance, with the exception of the extremely elite prep schools and Jesuit schools. Everything else is pretty much on par with public.

It's a common misconception. One that private schools understandably don't broadcast.

Now, you might prefer the social environment better. That's a real difference.

That's interesting. My daughter attends elementary school in one of the better private schools in my city. When we get standardized tests back her scores are always reported relative to "similar" schools (I forgot the exact wording but always assumed it means other private schools) and all school. "All" schools is always lower. I'll have to investigate how they are categorizing the schools.

 

[panamaican]

That's interesting. My daughter attends elementary school in one of the better private schools in my city. When we get standardized tests back her scores are always reported relative to "similar" schools (I forgot the exact wording but always assumed it means other private schools) and all school. "All" schools is always lower. I'll have to investigate how they are categorizing the schools.

Right but that's because you're not comparing your daughter to how she would perform in a public school. You're comparing how her private school student population compares to public school student population.

Think of it like a genius kid. If you put the genius kid in private school, he's a genius. If you put him in public school...is he any less a genius?

Now, what if all of the genius kids go to the local private school and all of the non-geniuses go to the public school. Which school will have higher scores - private school of course. But if all of those genius kids went to the public school and the non-geniuses went to the private school - what then? The outcomes would reverse.

The biggest error in looking at school testing in this country is that people forget that schools don't have identical ability distributions of students. So test scores aren't a reflection of the actual teaching ability. They're a reflection of which kids attend. But that's a composite, not an individual score.

What research has shown is that once you account for things like parental education and income, private vs. public makes no real difference. So your daughter would get generally the same scores regardless of if she was in the private or the public school. The schools scores might change more depending on how much she impacted the school average but her individual score wouldn't see much difference.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

That's interesting. My daughter attends elementary school in one of the better private schools in my city. When we get standardized tests back her scores are always reported relative to "similar" schools (I forgot the exact wording but always assumed it means other private schools) and all school. "All" schools is always lower. I'll have to investigate how they are categorizing the schools.

I think the point is that it's not really the school in and of itself that's causing the better scores.

Parents that are willing to spend extra money on private schools are more likely to be involved in their children's education. There is also the fact that private schools can expel disruptive students.

If both schools were dealing with the same student bodies and policies on expulsion the gap between private and public largely disappears.