[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but if you can't fix student parents and home life in the classroom, even by spending 50% more per student, then why pay 50% more per student? Is it really buying you very much?

Honest question, because I don't really know. One could argue that it's throwing money into a hole, trying to fix unfixable problems. Or one could argue that it's not fixing things, but it's doing at least some to close the gap. Does anyone have actual evidence one way or the other? A controlled experiment, or something?

[dfxm12]

For whatever reason, spending money on schools seems to be more palatable to lawmakers than some other things that might have a better outcome. For example, something like school lunches, which have a huge benefit [0] is under fire from certain politicians [1], even though these programs have near universal appeal. It's a similar story for the child tax credit.

0 - https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/true-cost-of-fo...

1 - https://theintercept.com/2024/03/21/house-republicans-ban-un...

[toomuchtodo]

You're not wrong, at all. This is the hard conversation to have. What would it take to improve outcomes? How much spending would it take? To me, it appears we are not willing to fix the overarching system, by which I mean support systems for parents for children 0-18. We don't want to pay for pre-k. We don't want to pay for daycare. We don't want to pay for quality K-12 education (over 1000 US school districts have moved to a 4 day week in an attempt to retain teachers). In some states, we're even unwilling to pay for student lunches. Instead, society as a whole wants to spend as little as possible to get able bodied workers and taxpayers out of the pipeline, while treating early education as babysitting so parents can be productive workers. It also wants to outlaw reproductive healthcare that leads to these outcomes, but does not care about the outcomes.

If you want my hot take, the solution is to drive as much funding as possible into family planning. This is where the dollars are most effective. This quickly shrinks the funnel of unwanted children on a go forward basis, allowing for the focus of resources on the remaining pipeline of children to be nurtured and developed by, hopefully, welcoming and resourced parents. There will be second order effects of course (see rapid total fertility rate decline across the world), but I believe we can all agree that suffering reduction for all involved is a worthy cause to pursue.

https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/preventing-unplanned-preg... ("While the controversies persist, most people agree that empowering women to have only the children they want has positive benefits for everyone in the form of better pregnancy outcomes, improved child well-being, more opportunities for women and their partners, reductions in costs to governments, and lower abortion rates.")

[ryandrake]

I think the point is that $/student is not a great metric. You could spend $500K/student, have world-class teachers, and still not improve their home life or how much their parents value/support their kids' education. Without parental engagement, you're not going to move the needle on outcomes.

[toomuchtodo]

Agreed, but who is going to say "no amount of reasonable spending is going to materially improve outcomes because parents and systemic socioeconomic issues are the problem" though? Not a lot of appetite for that conversation. Easier to say "fund schools more" because that problem feels tractable.

[lupire]

Telling people that they should have fewer children because they've been oppressed too much already, is not cool.

If you want well resourced parents, give parents back the resources that were stolen from their families.

[toomuchtodo]

Wealth and income inequality, as well as societal support for parents [1] [2], are important components in any fix of this situation when discussing "resourcing". My comment should not be read as "only the well off should have children." That was not the idea I intended to communicate, and I agree it is distasteful. I believe there is plenty of work to do already simply ensuring folks who don't want kids are empowered to not have them [3] [4] [5] [6], I leave the other problems mentioned in this comment to others to triage and action. Good luck to those folks, I don't envy that book of work; it's going to take decades to fix.

[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/29/baby-boomtown-...

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...

[4] https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed...

[5] https://www.axios.com/2024/04/16/young-adult-sterilization-i...

[6] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...