[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.