Average private school tuition is $12,139 per student. Average public school expenditure per student is $16,080. Do some research before posting.
The private school I attended did not have athletic fields (we rented city parks for practices and games). We did not have a track. Our weight room was a joke in a modular trailer. We did have an old basketball court and a parking lot. The only private school I can think of that costs $80k is IMG academy in Florida.
A lot of educational costs come from special education and the concept of inclusivity. If we were more willing as a society to track kids and decide who does and doesn't need to meet certain educational criteria we could probably do a lot more with a lot less when it comes to preparing kids for the future. However, doing that would inevitably leave some kids behind and there are serious ethical and logistical questions that pop up here and I'm not sure if meaningful reform can or even should be implemented in this regard.
As far as school being "glorified daycare", for starters, daycare is pretty important. Our society needs people to have kids, and it also needs a workforce. Without both of those things society as we know it collapses. So, don't sell daycare short. Secondly, public education, for all of its shortcomings, has played a pretty essential role in our progress as a civilization over the last 100 years. We're a long way from perfect, but don't take for granted just how good our lives are compared to the generations that came before us.
The daycare dig is a shot at the parent(s) not the school.
One could argue that society has regressed quite a bit since letting strangers at a daycare raise your children became the norm.
I don't think sending your kid to school, or preschool, is letting strangers raise them. I also don't think one could effectively argue that society has regressed quite a bit at any point in modern times. There's plenty to complain about, but the notion that society has regressed is a boogeyman used to promote grievance politics.
The solution to terrible parenting isn't throwing money at the schools.
But it sort of is. If you live in a district with 90% of the children in poverty, your choices are to let the kids suffer or provide programs to help the kids. You can't "force" their parents to stay together and form long-lasting, healthy relationships while building wealth. That isn't something you, as a teacher, can do.
So districts do what they can: offer free in-school breakfasts and after-school sports and clubs. Schools offer in building health centers. They offer in-house psychologists and drug-counselors and SROs and special Ed and alternative-Ed (so kids don't drop out) and on and on and on.
And those things cost a lot more money than hiring another 3rd grade teacher. But teaching isn't the problem, the other stuff is. And a kid can't focus on algebra until the other things are resolved. And those things cost less than the prison/police system, so at least were saving money there...
Seriously though, if the parents don't provide these things and the schools don't either (by your reasoning), then who does? Where does the 8th grader with seething untreated anger issues go? Where does the 3rd grader with no breakfast get breakfast?
It is an actual logistical question, not a philosophical one.
I don't think sending your kid to school, or preschool, is letting strangers raise them. I also don't think one could effectively argue that society has regressed quite a bit at any point in modern times. There's plenty to complain about, but the notion that society has regressed is a boogeyman used to promote grievance politics.
I agree. My teachers and my kids' teachers weren't strangers. They were hugely important figures in our lives. We loved our teachers and our schools. And honestly, if we hadn't all gone to school, our connection to our community and culture would have been so much weaker, not to mention the fact that school is where we learned to be friends and teammates and so on. Schools are the last shared cultural common denominator for a lot of our society.
This post was edited 24 seconds after it was posted.
The daycare dig is a shot at the parent(s) not the school.
One could argue that society has regressed quite a bit since letting strangers at a daycare raise your children became the norm.
I don't think sending your kid to school, or preschool, is letting strangers raise them. I also don't think one could effectively argue that society has regressed quite a bit at any point in modern times. There's plenty to complain about, but the notion that society has regressed is a boogeyman used to promote grievance politics.
I was referring to actual daycare.
In 1960 single motherhood had a stigma and there were very few single mothers and very few broken homes.
Today the stigma has been removed and single motherhood and broken homes are rampant.
That's a quantifiable regression.
Test scores have gone down.
That's a quantifiable regression.
Life expectancy has gone down.
That's a quantifiable regression.
There's dozens of areas where things are quantifiably worse today than they were in the recent past.
That's $3 per student to pay for the DC schools chancellor, with 93,000 students. However, I agree that school systems should radically cut administrators and their salaries to focus on classroom spending, same as at the university level. Get rid of the technology in the primary and secondary schools other than computer programming and science experiments and make them read books. What would get students to buy into the school system and try hard? One thing might be to publicize just how much it does rather than focusing only on the negative.
Lol at anyone who thinks the purpose of public schools is to "educate" children and prepare them for the real world.
The purpose of public schools, particularly in large urban areas where there is no ideological balance, is to indoctrinate kids with left wing grievance propaganda and siphon money to the Democratic party via forced union donations from teachers.
Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at America's extraordinarily high literacy rate in the 1830s. Modern day home schoolers (100x the kids relative to 50 years ago) are proving that real education happens for a tiny fraction of what public and private schools spend per capita.
The literacy rate in 1820 in the U.S. was 12%. Even in 1900, it was only 20%. Get a clue.
Lol at anyone who thinks the purpose of public schools is to "educate" children and prepare them for the real world.
The purpose of public schools, particularly in large urban areas where there is no ideological balance, is to indoctrinate kids with left wing grievance propaganda and siphon money to the Democratic party via forced union donations from teachers.
Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at America's extraordinarily high literacy rate in the 1830s. Modern day home schoolers (100x the kids relative to 50 years ago) are proving that real education happens for a tiny fraction of what public and private schools spend per capita.
The literacy rate in 1820 in the U.S. was 12%. Even in 1900, it was only 20%. Get a clue.
You're entitled to your own opinion you're not entitled to your own facts.
Presents information from 1869-70-the date of the first Office of Education report-to the late 1970s on. The creation of the Federal Department of Education in 1867 highlighted the importance of education.
Sooooo.... you want to be surrounded by idiots? $5k to live in a society of people who can read, do basic math, function, etc. is a total bargain. While I agree government is not super efficient, I'm really not sure what your alternative idea is. Private everything is super expensive (exhibit A, healthcare).
The Department of Education didn't even exist until 1980.
Do you believe everyone was an idiot prior to 1980?
The DoE's budget is $90 billion this year and the only purpose it seems to have is making education worse.
That's $7.2 million for every school district in America that's been flushed down the toilet just to employ bureaucrats who serve no useful purpose and provide zero value to education or the students.
Pell Grants, and student loans are like 45billion alone
Then add in title 1 stuff which, is also billons (that do not come out of your property taxes, but otherwise might).
Ed is not a big dept, it does administer a lot of money though.
Dept of Ed also DID exist before 1980. HEW was split into 2 departments. Ed and HHS.
Average private school tuition is $12,139 per student. Average public school expenditure per student is $16,080. Do some research before posting.
The private school I attended did not have athletic fields (we rented city parks for practices and games). We did not have a track. Our weight room was a joke in a modular trailer. We did have an old basketball court and a parking lot. The only private school I can think of that costs $80k is IMG academy in Florida.
1. Most East coast private colleges cost more than $80k per year.
2. The "top" private schools in New England are at @ $70k for tuition and room and board alone.
3 The most expensive private schools in NYC are over $90k for tuition alone.
The Department of Education didn't even exist until 1980.
Do you believe everyone was an idiot prior to 1980?
The DoE's budget is $90 billion this year and the only purpose it seems to have is making education worse.
That's $7.2 million for every school district in America that's been flushed down the toilet just to employ bureaucrats who serve no useful purpose and provide zero value to education or the students.
Pell Grants, and student loans are like 45billion alone
Then add in title 1 stuff which, is also billons (that do not come out of your property taxes, but otherwise might).
Ed is not a big dept, it does administer a lot of money though.
Dept of Ed also DID exist before 1980. HEW was split into 2 departments. Ed and HHS.
HEW didn't exist for the first 170+ years of the country either. If you can become a super power without it you probably didn't need it.
Like most things education is best handled at the state and local level. Adding layers of bureaucracy doesn't make anything better it just raises costs and lowers efficiency.
poor Asian countries don't need metal detectors in schools. nor do poor Eastern European countries. nor do poor African countries.
Maybe it's because those countries don't have subcultures that glorify shooting your 'opps'?
There are plenty of child soldiers in poor African, South American, Central American and Asian countries. Narcos take a number of kids out of school in the Americas (and in Golden triangle countries) and employ them as assassins and drug mules. In a number of those poor countries, girls are second class citizens and are not always allowed to attend school. Many young girls are trafficked from Eastern Europe into brothels in Western Europe to meet the demands of the sex trade (ironically legalized prostitution increases human trafficking as there are not enough women willing to have sex with strangers in exchange for cash). So all is far from rosy for kids in those countries.
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