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Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of people bouncing around ideas about how we can magically improve the U.S. school system, but I think fundamentally the problem is that we expect unreasonable results. We want to be able to pay $5000/pupil/year for a quality of education that properly costs at least $10,000 if not $15,000.

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Somehow the Finnish school system costs less per pupil per year than the U.S. one. I don't see why a suggestion to concentrate on more important things is responded to by demanding more money.

Money can improve some things, some things can be improved without money.

I suspect an abundance of social infrastructure (4% of children living in poverty vs 15%, per the article) acts as an unaccounted for subsidy for education - and for much else as well.

Living poor but having dignity seems to be impossible in the US?

There is little correlation in the US between per pupil spending and academic results. More so, increasingly public school expenditures are going not to teachers and basic supplies but administrative staff. The problem is not that we aren't spending enough money. The problem is that we aren't spending money on the right things.

Personally, I think our fundamental problem comes down to having a monopoly that gets paid whether they have to educate any particular student or not, which makes competition extremely difficult. Regardless of what education you choose, the unused public education slot still gets paid.

What kind of quality do you think we'll get when we still pay regardless of quality or need?

Increasing tuition won't help without solving that problem.

Everything I have heard says that the US spends a lot more per pupil than most of the developed world, and yet... has shitty schools.

The problem is that the $5000 isn't being distributed evenly. The schools that rich kids go to, public or private, get orders-of-magnitude more funding than the ones poor kids go to.

Do you have figures? I very much doubt if that is the case.

Just checked for Pennsylvania (2009-10 academic year), and while the biggest spenders are over double the lowest spenders, there are no order-of-magnitude-difference pairs. Also, only two of the top ten spenders (per student) were in the top 10% academically.

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