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Comment by rllearneratwork | Hacker News Reader

There are two core issues with public schools in USA:

(a) the funding is based on property taxes from school's neighborhood. This just fuels inequality loop: bad schools -> low property values -> low funding. Instead, the state should collect property taxes, not counties and distribute funding proportionally to students' population

(b) It is close to impossible to evaluate (and fire bad) teachers in public schools

Until (a) and (b) are addressed a very tiny fraction of public schools can be of acceptable quality. The pandemic just amplifies things and makes problems more urgent to address.

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> Instead, the state should collect property taxes, not counties and distribute funding proportionally to students' population

This was done in Kansas. Here's what happens:

1. Taxes are driven into the ground (...why would wealthy suburbs vote to tax themselves if that $ is just going to be redistributed away from their schools?).

2. Districts in wealthy suburbs run fundraisers that haul in six figures for breakfast (literally, and regularly). Those donations then pay for additional instructional staff, materials, books, etc.

3. Schools that can't make six figures on charity brunches for the band, golf house galas for the football team, and dinner parties for the STEM teacher are screwed.

This isn't a systems problem, it's a values/morality problem. If you change the system and don't change people's values then they will find a way to route around your system.

> It is close to impossible to evaluate (and fire bad) teachers in public schools

It's possible to fire bad teachers. Harder than it should be, but absolutely 100% possible. Evaluation is the more difficult problem, but I'm not sure source of funding has anything to do with that.

> band, golf house galas for the football team

While golf house, band and football team are all nice things to have, they are heavily optional for providing a good fundamental education.

1. Sorry for the confusing grammar. In that sentence, the golf house is the location at which the gala for the football team is held. Not a resource for the school. (E.g., because the gold house is owned by a country club whose members are the parents of many of the football players.)

2. Band, sports teams, and other extra curricular are:

a) often not de facto optional (the poorest districts in the country will scrape together the money for a football team), and

b) actually serve an important social + educational function. There’s lots of data correlating long-term life outcomes with participation in after-school extra-curricular activities.

3. These districts also both directly and indirectly subsidize their educational offerings with charitable donations.

They should have Universal School Funding where each student gets a Student Education Account that follows the student. In cases where local schools are all abysmal, using that money on accredited online or at home educational opportunities should be possible. Seems like we're already doing ad hoc ill considered online schools whipped up by local school districts. Might as well let people innovate in the space and do it properly. If parents want to try it. Some do.

Source of funding absolutely has everything to do with it. Schools only indirectly lose funding for bad teachers. If you get a bad barber, you go to a different barbershop. Schools don't have the same economic pressures. They have political and bureaucratic pressure, mainly.

The hybrid public/private market in higher education is a good warning of the perils of such a system. Many of the pathological incentives for voters, legislatures, and institutions that lead to horribly expensive higher ed would also exist in the "Student Education Account" scheme you propose.

If we go this route, I promise you'll be seeing "I can't retire because I spent $100K on my kid's K12 schooling" in 20 years.

Also -- and I admit this is personal preference -- I don't want my tax dollars redistributed to the local branch of the Catholic or Mormon church. Which is absolutely what would happen.

School is already horribly expensive, both in per student costs and in property values in successful school districts. The irony is all that money being thrown around doesn't end up paying for qualified STEM faculty.

As for funding religious schools, that's part of civil life. Others will object to funding atheism or critical race theory. Should we (forever) fight it out politically or should we find ways to disagree in the spirit of compromise?

> As for funding religious schools, that's part of civil life.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

My tax dollars pay for a Church I am no part of is what was meant by Establishment.

This is not true in every civil society, but it has always literally been Rule #1 in this civil society.

It really was not what was meant. Religious expression was more prevalent at the time that was ratified, if anything (such as prayers lead by officials).

In this case, legislative bodies would be establishing a funding solution. No particular choice about religion (or lack thereof!) is made there. That would be up to household responsible for the relevant children.

> but it has always literally been Rule #1 in this civil society.

It literally has not; first, because it wasn’t even a rule that bound the states until after the 14th Amendment, and second, because even federally the 1st Amendment wasn't in place from day one of the Constitutional order, being ratified 3 years after the Constitution; the First Congress under the Constitution was not bound by it at all, since it was ratified during the term of the Second Congress.

Saying it is a values/morality problem means you are giving up on solving the problem.

No, it means you are saying that the solution depends on changing people's minds rather than tinkering with the tax code for no benefit.

Trying to change peoples mind on something so fundamental as wanting the best for their children is almost as futile as trying to change the laws of physics. If you look at history one of the solution of social problems in communism was to change peoples mind (create the new men) mostly through methods like criticism and selfcriticism and education from early age on. While I believe this changed the character of the people to a certain extends it didnt really work. What my takeaway is, you shouldnt work against (or shouldnt rely on changing) human nature if you want to achieve solutions.

(Not picking specifically on communism here, was looking for examples. What works of course is raising peoples awareness about things they didnt know and support change, like palm oil or recycling)

> wanting the best for their children

K12 education is not zero-sum. In many ways it's positive-sum. Even private schools and "good" high schools in the USA are mediocre at best. Raise the median quality and the best schools will also get better.

> is close to impossible to evaluate (and fire bad) teachers in public schools

It is harder to hire new (good) teachers than it is to fire bad teachers.

My first teaching job paid $29,000 a year in 2004 and I had a CS degree. My classmate who I went to high school with, same college, same major, same minor, and moved back to the same town.. his starting salary was $80,000 and they paid for him to get his mba. He works at Google now.

16 years later and I make $60,000 teaching (because I moved to a much wealthier district). Next week I start a new job programming for $80,000.

Who is going to teach cs in my place? Who is going to turn down $80,000 - $100,000 for a $50,000 teaching job... In a school with 3000+ students, during a pandemic?

Everyone knows the answers, but why would a good CS teacher make so little? Seems like demand for high school level CS education is through the roof and the talent doesn't come cheap.

No one would design our educational system this way from scratch.

Teachers are not paid based on supply and demand. We all get paid the same amount (by district) based purely on years of teaching experience. With little perks for masters degrees ($1000 per year on my district) or teaching a CTE class like computer science ($2500 per year but 5 extra work days), and I even got a few extra steps on the ladder for industry experience (9 years experience for me, about $5000 up the ladder)

Some districts are doing a Pay For Performance situation, where "good teachers" can earn lots more... But I have a feeling the average teacher wage is lower in those districts and is highly dependent on what classes and mix of students your administrators give you (the AP calc teacher is going to have higher achieving students than the class full of seniors that are just taking algebra 1) it all depends on how "performance" is measured..

It's worth noting that the private sector doesn't have performance based pay figured out either. But it has a lot less ability to utterly deny pressure from the supply of labor or the demand for services.

At any rate, it's a shame. And folks will blame systemic educational failures on a lot of things, but this basically boils down to an entrenched bureaucratic culture that really has a regressive outcome. Rich parents, parents in university towns, and parents who are engineers will get their children access.

> Teachers are not paid based on supply and demand.

Actually, they are. There's just lots of crappy supply.

Pennsylvania got wonderfully hosed by this. Back in the late 1990s(?) Pennsylvania put up a real teacher's test. The problem was that almost half the teachers and would-be teachers failed the test. When Pennsylvania was about to have to face the reality of supply and demand (lots of money to pull in teachers who could actually pass the test), they simply scrapped the testing plan instead.

People only care about education quality until they have to pay for it.

I think we agree.

It has become clear to me that my job is to babysit first, and educate second.

If all you really want are babysitters, then you can get away with paying babysitter wages. And you'll be supplied with babysitters.

Babysitting at scale is actually pretty cheap. I get about $1.33 per student per hour, if you only count the time I am in the room with kids.

That would be a CS-specific thing.

If you were a chemistry, history or anything major, a salary of $60k would be much more in proportion that what could be made in "industry".

And it would be a brave act for school administration to say that CS teachers will be earning two times more than everyone else.

The chemistry, history, or anything teachers wouldn't get the 2500 stipend or the industry experience bump (even if they were a professional chemist for 20 years!), so would only make $60,000 after 30 years of teaching (at which point they would max out the ladder)

0 years experience, 45,000. 30 years experience, 60,000 (in my district) Do you have a phd? You get +$2000 a year.

The head football coach makes $100,000+. The band director makes $100,000+.

> The head football coach makes $100,000+

I'm waiting for the day when schools will start opening "adult education programs" with seven-digit scholarships to beef up their football teams.

Someone who wants a guaranteed pension, most likely. Those are rare and of non-trivial value.

I was surprised to find that (a) is not correct in many school districts. First, many poor schools are heavily subsidized by the state. Second, somehow there are tons of awful schools with decent funding. Just click through [1] for example. The very first school on the list [2] has funding of $14k per student. This is way above national average. And that's NM - not the most expensive state in the world.

As for (b) - wouldn't it apply equally to both good and bad schools?

[1] https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/?page...

[2] https://www.niche.com/k12/d/bernalillo-public-schools-nm/

> The very first school on the list [2] has funding of $14k per student.

The problem is that, according to the Gates Foundation, $14K is about the minimum point at which you start to have a functional classroom (and that study was about 10 years ago, now, so the number is higher)

Not a good point. A minimal point.

And the national average is below that.

And people then wonder why our schools suck.

I would agree with your argument, but I've clicked through a bunch of 'B' schools and - to my surprise - they're funded at exactly same level.

Also [3]. Apparently Gates Foundation lives in some parallel universe.

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/381745/education-expendi...

>It is close to impossible to evaluate (and fire bad) teachers in public schools

So this. They have no accountability. In Florida, a teacher can't be fired unless they break an actual law.

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