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Comment by baldfat | Hacker News Reader

> But that ignores federal funding, which is specifically targeted to the highest poverty districts.

Federal Funding is very low and has shrunk to 10% of funding for education. With education dollars it comes with designations and paper work. Most school districts have to spend hundreads of thousands of dollars on admins and staff to follow through with Federal funding. My inner city district had to fire 3 principles so we could recieve $2,000,000 in funding in 3 years. We got $400,000 and probably lost money out of the deal.

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Federal funding for schools shouldn't exist, imo. I'd prefer to see states handle everything related to funding and operating their education systems and the Dept of Ed perform a metrics/analytics/analysis/recommendation function, so that effective changes made by one state can be propagated out to the others, if they want it.

IMO, we should only have Federal funding for schools.

Having local, state, and federal involvement in funding adds complexity without providing any net benefit. EX: People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.

Disagree. Moving funding to a federal level might be more efficient but gives me, as a resident of one particular state, less control over how much is spent on education. I have zero interest in seeing a nationally funded education system gutted because a party I don't support is elected from states I don't live in that have outsize influence.

Further, the "laboratories of democracy" model means that if I don't like how my state is doing education, I'm free to move to another one.

> People move all the time, focusing at the state level concentrates costs while defusing benefits.

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. You don't think states are big enough to get economies of scale?

> Not sure... scale?

If some state say Iowa sees most young people move out of state then they don't get direct economic benefits from educating well. Alternatively, Virginia may benefit from importing an educated population and have less economic incentive to educate it's own population well.

Yes, their are incentives to educate your own children well, but a Florida retiree may not have any kids or grand kids in state and thus not care about educating people without a direct connection to them.

Those connections and thus incentives become more direct at the national level.

Sadly it is against the US Constitution.

Personally, Common Core standards for all states was a great idea that we will never see again in our lifetime.

I do want all local taxes and property tax to be removed from Educational funding and all funding to be statewide and the same per student across the state. (This might happen in our lifetimes)

My county has ~40,000 (aging) people and 5 public school districts. The notion of local control isn't going anywhere.

"(aging)" is just a remark about the demographics skewing away from children as the economy here stumbles along.

How well will that work out for poorer states?

Shouldn't make much difference, at a guess. Poorer states will generally have proportionally cheaper cost of living, real estate, etc. and should be able to do more with less as a result.

It starts with people not wanting to help other states. Now we have wealthier neighborhoods in the same city breaking off to form their own cities do they can separate themselses from the poorer parts of the city.

West Virginia (My wife is from there) has a higher cost of living and 2/3 of the income than where we live in Eastern PA.

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