[Andre_Wanglin]

I wish the opposite. Education should be entirely apolitical and atomized to give those with the most skin in the game the most control. Traditionally, this has been the American way and I do not find a more politicized approach has gained us anything other than divisiveness and contention. The more local the matter, the less the Rs and Ds matter and the more the actual names and people they represent do.

[godzillabrennus]

Exactly! Let’s leave education up to local government.

When the silly federal government wasn’t meddling in local schools they could avoid teaching evolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epperson_v._Arkansas

They could keep people with dark skin complexions in separate but equal schools. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education

With less federal intervention you are resoundingly correct that the academic circulum will represent the local community.

[sheepmullet]

> When the silly federal government wasn’t meddling in local schools they could avoid teaching evolution.

Could they? Only with the consent of the parents.

You are actually highlighting the OPs point. Government bureaucrats made a crazy ruling and people with actual skin in the game had to go along with it.

You are just saying "Hold up hold up. Not those bureaucrats. You should be forced to listen to these other bureaucrats instead".

[bokstavkjeks]

> Only with the consent of the parents.

Why should the consent of the parents matter when designing the curriculum? If the parents in an area suddenly decides that they all believe the earth is flat, would you be okay with that being the science education?

[sheepmullet]

> If the parents in an area suddenly decide

And if a bureaucrat decides that flat earth theory must be taught to kids would you be ok with that being the science education?

It's the difference between a state run economy and a capitalist one. Of course the capitalist one is not infallible but it has been proven time and time again to provide better results over time.

[nunya213]

How are parents better than bureaucrats in this case? There are countless towns in the US that if left to their own devices would soon resemble Sunday Schools and would utterly fail at educating students to a reasonable level.

[sheepmullet]

> There are countless towns in the US that <snip> would utterly fail at educating students to a reasonable level.

There are currently countless inner city schools that utterly fail at educating students to a reasonable level.

California with its immense wealth, it's progressive views, and some of the most intelligent bureaucrats has one of the worst school systems in the country.

> would soon resemble Sunday Schools

Why do you think that?

Parents want their kids to do well. They understand the scientific method is important for a wide range of careers.

Conservatives are on equal footing with progressives when it comes to science except for belief in evolution.

Would you find some schools refusing to teach evolution? Yes, but they would be in the minority even in deep red states. And even then the majority of those schools would still be teaching the scientific method. They would just drop evolution from the curriculum.

[nunya213]

I think you have a very poor understanding of education culture and attitudes towards science in the US.

[dagw]

give those with the most skin in the game the most control.

Who would that be?

[adventured]

The local people that must utilize the local schools of course.

The US varies to a great degree from the top 10 states to the bottom 10 states, economically. Massachusetts is at $75,000+ GDP per capita, on par with Norway. Mississippi at the bottom is at $37,000, half that of New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts. The gulf isn't nearly as wide as that of the EU ($70k Ireland vs $13k Croatia), however it's still a considerable difference.

How would one propose the Federal Government's massive bureaucracy manage such wide variances in prosperity when it comes to states & counties? Maybe a dozen large school system zones, each semi-locally managed, encompassing several states. Otherwise, the best option is for states and counties to retain large amounts of control over local education.

[jrumbut]

Isn't the disparity between states (which is even more pronounced at the municipal level) an argument for more federal intervention? How can Mississippi ever afford an education system like Massachusetts has? How else would the best ideas make it to more insular communities?

Of course there needs to be some local control, some variation to help the students succeed in the environment they'll actually live in (agriculture classes in Iowa, for instance), but the federal government has an important role to play in preventing local systems from falling very far behind and spreading knowledge about what works in comparable systems.

It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, and certainly it does require a lot of money and people and procedures. Education is complicated and critical to both the present and future functioning of society.

[adventured]

> Isn't the disparity between states (which is even more pronounced at the municipal level) an argument for more federal intervention?

I believe it's an argument for financial subsidy, not an argument for large amounts of control transfer away from local and up the chain to some far away bureaucrat.

The system I'd envision would have large amounts of local state + county control/influence, Federal subsidy to boost poor states who lack the tax resources, and a certain number of Federal supervisory school agency zones that would coordinate with the states in that zone to keep results high and represent the Federal Government's money (the US tax payer's money in theory). The idea would be to stay away from having bureaucrats in DC directly telling people in Idaho how to operate their education systems or how to fix their local problems (the Federal school zone overseeing Idaho would operate more locally and would be accountable to the member states; these Federal zones or agencies would be partners with the states conceptually).

[toasterlovin]

FYI Missippi has a GDP per capita similar to Germany, France, and the UK.

[dagw]

According to the numbers on Wikipedia Mississippi seems to be about $8-12k GDP per capita below the countries you mentioned.

[toasterlovin]

Shoot, you're right. I saw somebody upthread mention ~$40k for Mississippi and didn't bother to verify. Still, it's not exactly like Mississippi is a 3rd world country.

[goodpass]

White people.