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comment by snoodog
snoodog  ·  3124 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us

The idea has an implied association that there is a very good correlation between money spent on education and outcomes. I don't think that's necessarily true I found conflicting data that seems to imply we dont have a really good way to compare school systems. A lot of the money is simply wasted on stupid shit like "technology", Ipads, administrators and non common text books.

Also im going to take a soft stab at you and point out that if $spent per pupil is highly correlated with outcomes this program would benefit people like you that send their kids to private school by decreasing the pool of potential viable high performing competitors. (More people in the middle less on the edges where they can compete with private schools). I dont think that's what you were thinking of when you brought up the idea but I figured it would be worth mentioning.

Ref:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ Would imply poor correlation but i think their methodology is fucked

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/15/247-wall-st-states-best-schools/21388041/ would imply pretty good correlation.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/15/247-wall-st-states-best-schools/21388041/ medium good correlation





kleinbl00  ·  3124 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The idea has an implied association that there is a very good correlation between money spent on education and outcomes.

It doesn't, actually. It implies that when a school district's funding is determined by its property taxes, the wealthy will congregate in wealthy school districts while the poor will be marginalized into impoverished ones. Further, that pursuit of decent education becomes transformed into the pursuit of pricy real estate which further drives the stratification of education and society.

I'm not going to go toe-to-toe on four links that refute an argument I didn't make. I linked to a book; you wanna attack "me", read the book.

snoodog  ·  3124 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That makes more sense I guess I would have to go read the book to see what data she uses to support that argument. I always assumed wealthy people congregated in the same area even if that wasn't the case due to the safety, prestige and networking aspect but I could be wrong.

kleinbl00  ·  3124 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a hell of a book, actually - she makes the argument that the middle class crush is a whole bunch of unintentional externalities, and then lays out what they are and why.