More specifically the US currently spends more than the vast majority of the world per pupil [1], yet our outcomes in e.g. math leave us somewhere between Malta and and Slovakia. [2] Clearly it does not seem that 'more money' is the solution.
[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
[2] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
They are just trying to cut down large education bureaucracies that don’t appear to be benefiting the students.
Generally very large or very small public school systems in America really underperform for the students. It’s not clear that the Federal resources in the Dept of Education are directly benefiting the students.
They are trying to give more control over education to parents and local communities especially those in underperforming areas.
It's not unfair at all, that is what they're trying to do. It would be a political career ender to say that so they say things like "trying to cut down large education bureaucracies that don’t appear to be benefiting the students." But there is an influential contingent of republicans that wants to effectively end american universal public education and they're not meaningfully opposed within the party.
> It’s not clear that the Federal resources in the Dept of Education are directly benefiting the students.
What's your area of experience with education where this is how you've come to see it? Because for what I do, it's extremely obvious that these resources do benefit the students.
And, depending on the district, those federal resources provide a significant chunk of the funding for schools.
In my local district in Kansas, it’s about 13% of public school funding, in the district next door it’s about 44%. Without that funding many public schools in the area would close with no alternative.
By cutting off those resources, there is no “choice” or “control” being given to local communities unless you mean a certain family in Wichita…
Perhaps I'm wearing rose tinted glasses, but I think schools should be governed on a state or local level. That way you can better match the needs of the students, all of the students, in that area.
Would you tell me though, please, what language and cultural differences should inflect science or math or literature or history? Are you suggesting evolution not be taught where there are parents who object, or that the civil war be taught differently in the former confederacy, so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings? Those things are happening, of course. I’m just innocent of any defense for them.
Whoever "they" are in your assertion, they are not cutting down bureaucracy or promoting local control. The federal government has not issued new regulations to cap administrative overhead, for example. It simply abandoned its civil rights enforcement and slashed funding.
Agreed, public schools in America do a poor job. Something like 1/3 of graduating seniors are ready for college work, according to the "national report card". But that’s by design: elected school boards and administration determine salaries and standards. No principal wants to explain poor grades to a disappointed parent; no teacher wants to combat a parent’s prejudice by teaching real history or biology. So, the curriculum is mediocre and grades are high.
The situation isn’t much better at private schools by the way. Grade inflation is everywhere. Harvard just has the luxury of picking its students.
No Child Left Behind and civil-rights enforcement by the department of education did narrow the achievement gap, which has now begun to widen again. So it is clear the department directly benefits student. The complaint is not that; it is that it benefits the "wrong" students, if you get my drift.
lapcat•1h ago
This may be why they want to eliminate public education.
IAmBroom•1h ago
"We find that firefighting services have been essential for eliminating fires, saving people from fires, and getting cats out of trees. And charity calendar sales."
lotsofpulp•1h ago
Voters wanted better results from poorer performing students, but politicians had no cheap way to deliver them, since the poor performance is caused due to the environment at home.
The politically acceptable and cheap solution was capping the ceiling instead of raising the floor, which means parents who wanted their kids to excel sought school districts with similar parents, or sought private schools.
Obviously the current admin and their previous term did not help the situation, but the incentives had been set wrong long before they came to power.
alphawhisky•1h ago
lotsofpulp•58m ago
https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/article_a5b43015-...
Obviously, education should be properly funded, and many places do not pay competitively, especially considering many teachers these days have to baby sit mentally ill kids. But the bigger problem is that the kids who can and want to excel have been deprioritized in favor of the those who can’t or don’t want to learn.
NoMoreNicksLeft•52m ago
Compare the funding per student to any other country in Europe... they've been hilariously overfunded for longer than either of us have been alive.
>The reality is that there were never enough resources in the first place, a
That's not reality. That's "spin". There were always enough resources for high achievement from those capable of high achievement... but then equal amounts of money wouldn't be wasted on low achievers.
>Maybe, just MAYBE, if we took the 60k signing bonus
This is just bad math. You need how many teachers nationwide? 1 million-ish? Go ahead and split those $60k bonuses over that many teachers (and over the next 20 years), and the few tens or hundreds of dollars that it ends up being, per teacher, is supposed to make a difference?
HankStallone•22m ago
They can see that the corollary talking point (schools in disadvantaged areas get less funding) is a lie too. From an MIT study: "The distribution of spending experienced by children living in poverty (figure 1a) is nearly indistinguishable from that of children not living in poverty (figure 1b)."[1] People who make that claim usually only count state and local funding, ignoring federal Title I which makes up for it.
The "underfunded schools" dog just won't hunt anymore. People who are worried about their next paycheck don't want to hear it, especially when it often comes from school administrators who make more than they do.
[1] https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/19/1/169/116642/Funding-...
potato3732842•50m ago
Give the money to the people (parents) and let them choose whether to spend it on school fundraisers or anything else.
Garbage in, garbage out. Schools are shit because inputs are poor (literally and figuratively) and inputs are poor because most people in this country lose half their paycheck to the government and interests that are in bed with government[1]. As other commenters have pointed out, the actual level of funding per student is by no means the bottleneck here.
[1] E.g. a landlord who's rent price is a reflection of constrained supply which is constrained partly by law but partly by the supply of component parts (materials, labor, design work) of competing goods which themselves are subject to yet more artificial constraints, etc, repeat infinitely)
PaulHoule•37m ago
I know a high school music teacher who's been assaulted by students multiple times. The teacher who inspired me to learn physics took me to the school after hours to see what his classroom looked like after hours and it was so stuffed with chairs that I asked "Has the fire marshal been here?" Every teacher I've known in the public schools has had times when they came home crying because of the moral injury of knowing that they can't help many of their students.
That music teacher has five years to go to retirement with a full pension but with the stress he's under I don't know if he'll make it. Private schools can pay teachers less because it's a better job to teach in private schools not least that private schools can evict the bottom 20% of students (in terms of behavior) who consume 80% of the teacher's time.
lapcat•43m ago
What decline do you mean exactly?
> The politically acceptable and cheap solution was capping the ceiling
What cap do you mean exactly?
lotsofpulp•31m ago
https://archive.is/2025.05.30-210113/https://www.economist.c...
>An analysis by The Economist suggests that schools are lowering academic standards in order to enable more pupils to graduate. And the trend is hurting low-performing pupils the most.
See the last paragraph of PaulHoule’s comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45449204
Also, the federal politicians screwed public schools by mandating various very expensive services, but providing no funding. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEA_2004
Every kid is legally mandated to have access to a potentially expensive Individual Education Plan, but no extra money is given to the schools to provide this, so where do the funds come from?
potato3732842•1h ago
alphawhisky•59m ago
potato3732842•41m ago
I was thinking more on the lines of the sort of how they never really teach critical thinking, gloss over any and every historical mistake and perhaps how to spot and avoid them and generally do their hardest to create what shortsighted small scope government silos see as model citizens at the expense of not creating people capable of sort of long term thinking and ability to connect disparate concepts that result in a more performant society.
But anyway, I think your response speaks volumes.
lapcat•37m ago
NoMoreNicksLeft•59m ago
If I am honest, I do not have the same values as those who favor public education. Not only do our values have very little overlap, the values that are extolled by them are quite offensive and disgusting to me. Given that these values are now those of the public education system, I should be desperately worried about my own children and the children of people I care about. However, since the late 1990s a curious thing has happened, and none of those children are in danger. My children do not attend public school and yet aren't being hunted down for truancy as I would have been as a child.
We've already eliminated the danger of public education. This might be confusing to you, because some children still attend. Others are aware, you'll see it expressed in every reddit thread... someone will call for the end of homeschooling on the grounds that they're unable to indoctrinate every child, though they describe if much more charitably than that. None of those children will grow up caring about public education, none of them will ever vote in ways favorable to public education their entire lives. The shift has already begun, and in the coming years it will become ever more obvious.
jklowden•9m ago
And, yes, the assault on democracy is real. On January 20, Trump signed an order in support of free speech. Within a week he barred the AP over the Gulf of America. Within a month he illegally disbanded USAID. Within 3 months he began suing law firms and defunding university research. Today colleges are receiving letters demanding curriculum in exchange for funding. And we have four years more, at least, to endure.