[hajile]

This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school.

In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt.

Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living).

At that point, schools will have to compete on offering a good education instead of being the local monopoly you are forced into using. It also offers smart kids born into bad school districts a way out of the cycle of poverty.

Politically, it’s weird too. This policy is fundamentally socialist redistribution, but is embraced by the right while being decried as evil by the left.

[George83728]

> In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt.

As you've identified, it's not because of funding, but it's not because private schools care more either. It's because private schools can kick out bad students, the students who deliberately make trouble and hold all the rest back. Private schools all do this, while public schools generally cannot (or it is so difficult that it rarely happens.) Throwing money at schools makes little difference if all the students in that school are forced to endure assaults and disruptions dished out by malicious students who are deliberately sabotaging everybody else.

[hajile]

In my observation, private schools (outside the most ritzy ones) are usually VERY hesitant to remove students because they can’t afford the revenue loss while public schools get the same money either way.

The ability to separate good students (regardless of financial or ethnic background) so they can learn without disruption from kids not wanting to learn is a huge positive. Lots of brilliant kids are held back by the terrible schools they are forced to attend. This would provide much better equality of opportunity.

[George83728]

The sort of private schools who retain lots of disruptive poor performers because of the money aren't the sort of private schools that perform well as schools. My statement that "private schools all [kick out bad students]" is an oversimplification because some private schools definitely specialize in admitting bad students from rich families. But those schools of last resort aren't the schools that are sought after by anybody who could instead send their children to a school with strict behavior and performance requirements. The desirable private schools are selective because being selective makes them desirable.

But at American public schools? A student flunking so hard they have to repeat a grade, once a fairly common occurrence, has become almost unheard of because turning a blind eye to misbehavior and performance has become the path of least resistance to each individual teacher and administrator. School administrators have no incentive to maintain the school's reputation because the school's reputation was never important in the first place. They don't have to sell parents on the merits of the school because they get incoming students and funding by default. The teachers who try to uphold standards get beaten down by the system, crushed with mountains of paperwork and are accused of being the reason that student behaves poorly. And so you get American public school systems where half the graduating students are functionally illiterate and everybody in the system pretends not to notice.

[eru]

> Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living).

Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)

[hajile]

That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.

[eru]

I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education.

There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

[hajile]

There’s merit to this view, but it lacks wisdom.

Why send money just because?

People are then going to ask why they are sending the money instead of lowering federal taxes and increasing state taxes.

The truthful answer “we’re taking money from your state and giving it to another state to subsidize them” is going to tick off the rich states and lead to resentment.

Further, they will still be left asking “why do they need my money?” and “what are they spending my money on?”

Saying “we’re making sure all kids get a decent education” Is much more palatable than “whatever they feel like” even though the money no longer allocated to education is then spent on whatever they feel like.

[eru]

You can make up stories about voters objecting to almost any good idea, if you need an argument for why a second best idea is preferable.

> The truthful answer “we’re taking money from your state and giving it to another state to subsidize them” is going to tick off the rich states and lead to resentment.

So you are suggestion it's better to mislead people in a democracy?

[drekk]

> Funneling children into the arms of private businesses is fundamentally socialist redistribution

Mmm I'm going to take a very controversial stance here and say that no, privatizing education is not "fundamentally socialist distribution" or even "progressive" for that matter.

It absolutely is a money problem when teachers are spending their own salaries (already much lower than their EU counterparts) on classrooms. You can say there's corruption, that the money disappears, etc. but it's possible to solve the problems in public education by making sure the people molding the minds of the next generation make a decent living.

All my friends in academia were tired of being treated like shit (in both public and charter systems) and ended up pivoting to code where they make 2-3x the salary with dramatically less effort. Even worse for teachers in "inner cities" where the cost of living is higher. Small wonder that the US has some of the worst education outcomes compared to other "industrial liberal republics".