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by tarakat 1387 days ago
> But generally, this is simply because of crime and bad schools due to the cycle of poverty.

What makes the schools bad, if they receive on-average marginally higher per-pupil funding than mostly-white schools [1]?

[1] on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724... - I can't find a source now, but the average per-pupil funding is around $20,000, so a difference of $200 is negligible.

If you're surprised that the funding is almost the same, despite schools being funded by property taxes, which are much higher in whiter neighborhoods, that's because you were hoodwinked by the media. Schools are funded by local property taxes and state taxes, with the latter distributed to even-out the funding. For some mysterious reason, the latter funding source receives much less coverage than the former.

2 comments

When schools have increased funding it doesn't magically solve the problems. You will still have high crime levels, gang problems, lower attendance, less educated parents, less likely to have a stay at home parent, less money for tutoring, less stable housing, less likely to have 2 parents in the household, etc.

Don't get me wrong, money does play an impact, but only when the families have it. When families are wealthier their kids do better even if their school is getting less funding than some of these schools in poor areas.

I'm not really talking about just handing out more money to schools, nor debating whether schools received less funding. The school problem comes from both not valuing education and people who have had a rougher go at life that the problem keeps perpetuating in their children. (dad in jail, mom on drugs, mom working 2 jobs so has no time and the children just hang with other older children, etc.). Feel free to send your kid to that school if you think it's just as fair a shot at life.
Those sound like problems with the pupils, not the school. This is not semantics - it affects how to solve the problem, and informs what consequences various solutions may have.