[acjohnson55]

> Literacy is a low threshold.

Truly! But not low enough for the USA to be failing.

> Is it "fair" to only provide them to certain populations, those deemed most in need? If these methods are successful, why should any student be deprived of them?

The fact is, in the upper half of the American class system, educational needs are fantastically well served by redundant layers of investment. I went to an extremely well resourced public high school that made my mid-tier undergrad education a breeze.

That's not saying my school was perfect. Even it did a poor job of addressing the needs of the students at the highest risk. But this is my point. We need an attitude and behavioral shift toward truly embracing the concept that no child should be left behind without a fight.

I don't mean to sidestep your question, but you're identifying a purely hypothetical problem when we're in an ongoing educational crisis. It's kind of like saying, "won't those firehouses cause water damage to the carpet?"

[Wohlf]

>The fact is, in the upper half of the American class system, educational needs are fantastically well served by redundant layers of investment.

And in the lower levels, we attempt to pick up the slack by spending more money. Unfortunately, this is not a problem money can solve. Motivated parents are the only real solution, assisted by more efficient use of resources.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-mor...

[acjohnson55]

As a teacher at a tough school in Baltimore, almost every parent or guardian I dealt with wanted nothing more than a bright future for their kid. The lengths some of these parents went through were beyond impressive. But these are families who are often suffering the compounding effects of poverty and living in impoverished communities. That means they often didn't have a high quality education themselves or social capital or political pull.

Today's "nonideal" parent is just the kid the system failed yesterday. Any solution has to acknowledge the debt we have built up.

I read the article you linked. It's a great article. But what it doesn't say is "unfortunately, this is not a problem money can solve", and I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion.

Of course there are ways of spending money that don't have good "outcomes". But the article both cites examples where monetary investment has paid off and also challenges the reader to take an expansive view of what the "outcomes" are. Which I 100% agree with, because schools in impoverished carry far more of the load of holding together communities and providing essential services than in well off areas.