[rayiner]

So this article goes on for paragraphs blaming republicans and evangelicals and the red scare and slavery. But why do democrats (apparently) hate their children as well? After all, education is 90% funded by states and municipalities. That’s not unique to the US—education is a local issue everywhere from Sweden to Canada to Germany. Why are schools falling apart in Baltimore and Chicago? Why aren’t social services for children materially better in Illinois and New York?

For example, the article prominently quotes a state Rep from Idaho to illustrate why the author’s political opponents have the wrong values. But 8th graders in Idaho do better in reading than those in California, Delaware, Oregon, and Maryland, and comparably to New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Minnesota. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/s.... And Idaho is a lot poorer than those states!

The author’s comparison to Greece is unintentionally revealing. Allegedly, Greece doesn’t hate its children. But Greece spends only 4% of GDP on education, in comparison to 6% for the US. Another telling data point: over 90% of Greek children live with both parents, compared to under 70% in the US.

[xrd]

She quotes Manchin as well, a Democrat, right?

Why isn't education funded at the federal level? Feels like something so expensive, should be funded at the federal level, not just regulated there, and not when federal income taxes dwarf state tax options.

[xyzzyz]

How is state vs federal funding relevant here? What is the point that you are trying make? Im confused here. That we needs the Feds to slash enormous school budgets in failing places like NYC, Baltimore or Chicago, to the levels seen in more successful places like Idaho which have lower budgets?

[xrd]

Midwestern states get farming subsidies. I know several people in the Midwest who, after making snarky comments about West Coast schools, will you l happily take that $1000+/mo check, people that don't have kids. If the federal government is going to regulate the schools, as they do, discussing whether they should help pay for it out of the enormous federal budget seems relevant to me. I can think of a lot of different ways I would rather spend money on, like schools, than on the military and health care system, things that disproportionately benefit certain states (not saying those are all Midwestern states!). But, let's not stop having conversations about where and how money is spent.

[xyzzyz]

I have no idea how farming subsidies are relevant here. Farm subsidies are tiny fraction of US federal government spend. US Federal Government already spends more than 5 times as much money on education than it does on agricultural subsidies, and 50 times as much on military than it does on agricultural subsidies. Even that tiny spend is mostly benefitting the consumers rather than farmers, in the form of lower food prices. If we redirected all agricultural subsidies to educational spending, because federal educational spending is only a small fraction of total educational spending, total educational spending in US would only grow by measly 2%.

I have no idea why anyone would bring agricultural subsidies in the context of education spend, other than to signal disdain for the outgroup. This is simply completely irrelevant.

[paulryanrogers]

Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier. Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.

European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.

[skissane]

> Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier.

One of the states rayiner cited Idaho as outperforming is Delaware. Idaho does not have a "small fraction" of the population of Delaware, it has almost twice Delware's population

It is also unclear why, above a certain minimum, population in itself should make any significant difference to a jurisdiction's ability to provide a quality education. As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.

Furthermore, Idaho is a lot more diverse than you seem to think it is. Only 80% of the state's population is non-Hispanic white; in K-12 public school enrolments, it is only 73%. [0] Deep red Idaho's schools outperform those of light blue Maine, despite the fact that Idaho has close to 40% more people, and significantly greater ethnic diversity (Maine's population is 92% non-Hispanic white)

[0] https://idahoschools.org/state/ID

[com2kid]

> As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.

American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working. People get pissed if the electric poles fall down, or when water stops flowing, so school budgets get cut instead.

Accordingly, older cities lose more money (more old stuff to maintain) and cities that grow larger (add more low density single family homes) lose more money faster.

40% of Idaho's population lives in a single mid-size city that apparently isn't burning through cash. If Boise 3x'd in population, it'd probably also start losing money like other larger American cities.

[xyzzyz]

> American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working.

This is very much false. I don’t know why this misinformation is so widespread, but even a glance look at the municipal budgets is enough to see the facts contradict it. The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.

[com2kid]

It depends on the age of the suburb/city.

Newer areas do fine. Infrastructure eventually needs not just maintenance, but massive replacement.

Roads, bridges, sewer systems, all start to fall down. Ideally a city would estimate the worst cost of replacement at the time infrastructure is first built, and set aside money from year 1 such that the replacement cost is fully funded when the roads/pipes/bridges wear out.

If that ever does happen (and maybe it has happened a couple times in history) what will end up happening is some candidate for city council comes along and says they can reduce taxes, just vote'em in, and now all of a sudden the "50 year in the future replacement fund" is no more.

There is of course the economic argument that saving money in the bank with crap interest rates is terrible finances, and that it is in fact better for the city to just borrow 50 years hence, but the counter argument is that low interests were a recent anomaly in US history.

(The investment options cities have for where they can save money for 50 year later projects are fairly limited, which is another point against cities saving money up).

Now, a bit ironically, large condo and townhome associations in many cities are required to have savings sufficient for future expenses. These laws were passed because without the backing of "the city is making us" board members on HOAs will quickly get kicked out the second they propose a budget that actually covers future expenses. In cities that don't mandate responsible reserve funds on the part of HOAs, what you find is tons of complexes are underfunded because despite having a (mandated by law) prepared document of future expenses, the can is just kicked down the road.

(cities do have reserve funding, but rarely do those take into account all future infra needs)

> The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.

I opened the budget for the city of Kirkland WA[1], which is obscenely well run financially (they regularly run a surplus despite Washington state having a law capping properly tax increases are below inflation levels, a law which has slowly starved many cities of funding), and capital projects are over 25% of the budget. Just water and sewer appears to be around 13% of the city's overall budget.

Looking at Seattle's budget, a city that other countries would call "low density" (and honestly, in some countries Seattle is small enough that it wouldn't even be considered a major city!) of a nearly 6 billion dollar budget, 2 billion is spent on utilities. As someone who lives in Seattle, I can attest that one of the current problems we face is our sewer system is way behind the times and needs lots of updating, but again, no money.

Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).

Washington State is actually a bit odd in that district funding largely comes from the state, by way of property taxes, but even so let's compare the funding for schools to the rest of a city's budget.

Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects.

Is it a huge chunk of the city's budget? Yeah. But by no means do educational expenses dwarf other city expenses.

[1] https://www.kirklandwa.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/2/fin...

[2]https://www.shorelinewa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57270...

[3]https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694655298/shoreline...

[skissane]

What you are not considering here, is that in many states, school districts are separate special-purpose local governments, independent from the county or municipality, with their own separate elections, governing bodies, budgets, taxing and borrowing powers. So how much the county or municipality is spending on whatever has no direct impact on how much the school district has to spend. It is possible for the county or municipality to go bankrupt due to financial mismanagement, even while the school districts are in good financial shape.

[xyzzyz]

OK, what I wrote was incorrect. What I had in mind was that cities spend less than 10% on road infrastructure, but I carelessly didn't specify that. You seem to understand these issues much better than a typical person, and I think you deserve a careful and thorough reply.

> Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).

> (...)

> Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects

First, the Shoreline School District's budget is more like $220M. $168M is just the General Fund, additional $26M go to capital projects, and $35M go to debt service. That's $16k per student, which, by the way, is around 50% more than the private school tuition for my children in Seattle, which does not exactly makes me sympathetic to the narrative of starved school budgets being cut to pay for infra.

Worth noting is that many Shoreline parents pay for private education, but do not pay for private roads or water or sewer. Thus, $220M is underestimate of educational spend, whereas infrastructure spend is not underestimated by looking at the budget.

Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less (not a given though: we'd have fewer miles of roads to maintain, but average right of way would become much busier, and work on busy road is typically much more expensive). So let's dive into Shoreline budget to see what spend could look like in more dense world.

The $136.1 capital spend is split as follows:

* $43M is General Capital, and $92M is Road Capital

* The $43M General Capital fund is split into $5M spend on Maintenance Facility, $5M on "Debt Service and Other", and $33M is spent on capital improvements to city parks. I'll assume that all of this spend would remain in denser world (unless denser world means fewer/smaller city parks per capita).

* $92M is spent roughly in half between Pedestrian/Non-Motorized Projects, and Safety Operations (which I assume is mostly motorized infrastructure).

* Half of pedestrian spend is on a pedestrian bridge over I-5, which would still be built if Shoreline was denser (in fact, we might then need more pedestrian bridges). The other half is building new sidewalks. More pedestrians means fewer roads, but more sidewalks required, so it's hard for me to estimate how sidewalk spend which change with increased density, but let's say that increased density means spend on sidewalks could be cut by half, so we'd see something like $15M savings.

* In the Safety Operations (i.e. motorized) spend, large majority is N 145th St improvements. This is the major arterial in Shoreline, and would likely still be part of Shoreline's budget if it was denser. It would probably be shorter then, so let's cut the spend by half. The rest we can also cut in half, for $20M in total savings.

* Worth noting is that road resurfacing spend (which accounts for most of road maintenance) is less than $3M, which is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. Maintaining suburban roads is very cheap.

* Thus, increased densification would result in savings of something like $35M, which is a quarter of capital projects.

* If you do the same exercise for utilities, you'll find that a third of it is surface water spend (storm drains etc), which would probably be cut by half in denser world. Two thirds is wastewater spend, which would be reduced by much less in denser world (as the spend scales much more with volume than with length of the system).

* To sum up, densification would save Shoreline something like $60M, which is a small fraction of educational spend. In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.

[rayiner]

> Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places.

That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it.

> Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.

But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money.

It's not just reading scores. Conservatives have greater well-being on various objective measures: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand.... That includes their kids: https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-teenagers-general....

Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country.").

> European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.

In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow?

[klooney]

The problem is "diversity" is too mealy mouthed for the specific finger they're trying to point- kids from Guatemala (or insert any other country with a high number of recent emigres) who don't speak or read English don't test well on exams with English language instructions for tautological reasons.

That's only part of the problem in blue states though, and does not explain the full discrepancy.

[xrd]

How much does cost of living factor into ability to deliver results for schools? The further you go into the heartland, the cheaper the land gets. I think that plays a part.

[skissane]

Cost of living declines, but the tax base also shrinks – fewer large corporations and high-income earners, plus cheaper real estate reduces property tax revenues. Whatever advantages the lower cost of living gives, the reduced tax base may take away.

[seanmcdirmid]

Salt Lake City is pretty liberal, so it isn't weird that it has egalitarian society liberals say they want to create.

[echometerain]

Kids in poorer states being able to read better actually makes sense considering the damage that Marie Clay's cueing system caused. Check out https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ if you're interested. It was posted here a couple months back.

[scrubs]

The Breakfast club analogy in the first 2/3rds of the film --- there's a finite number of distinct and static social-idelogical-clubs --- analogously Republicans and Democrats in politics is silly. No penetrating and practical solutions will follow from this contextualization.