[iguy]

Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on?

In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here.

Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While I'm sure there are anecdotes I'm dubious this could add up to enough.

I thought that in fact teacher salaries were higher in tough schools (and that, when they got sick of it, teachers would take a pay cut to teach in a nice suburb instead) but this was from conversations, and looking for data, it does look like average salaries are higher in rich areas (although for more senior teachers), and class sizes a little smaller, although I haven't dug very deep.

[sct202]

A lot of schools use teachers aides to support kids with special needs, like Chicago has 12k teachers, 4k special ed classroom assistants, and 3.7k special ed teachers. So like the top line teacher to student ratio may be similar to a suburban school, but I doubt that the suburban schools have that high of a ratio of special ed support staff and teachers.

https://cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Employ...

[iguy]

Thanks. Those are huge numbers, 40% of teaching staff who (it seems) don't count as teachers. Presumably these totals include richer & poorer parts of the city, and if it's skewed then the proportion may be even higher in the poorer bits? (Or will all the richer bits be outside Chicago school district?)

[istjohn]

I agree it's a worth exploring. Just spitballing, part of it may be the cost of maintaining old buildings, particularly when changing demographics lead to over-capacity in some neighborhoods and under-capacity in others. It may also stem from financial mismanagement. There is generally less parental engagement, since poor families have more pressing concerns, so it's easier for waste or fraud to go unchecked. I don't know, none of these explanations are particularly convincing.