
More Money Really Does Make Schools Better - wslh
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-04/spending-more-money-really-does-make-schools-better
======
mdorazio
Title is very misleading. Here's the actual finding, as stated by the article:

"In other words, providing better physical and social environments for poor
kids helps boost their performance relative to their richer peers."

It's been pretty well known for a while that the family and neighborhood
environment of young students is a massive contributor to academic
performance, so just pouring more money into schools themselves doesn't help
things overly much. You tend to get better results by spending money on things
like daycare (to help parents) and scholarships (to incentivize students).
Example:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-
fl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html)

Edit in case NY Times is paywalled - This is the program's actual website:
[http://www.tangeloparkprogram.com/](http://www.tangeloparkprogram.com/)

~~~
scott_s
I think that your characterization misses that in this recent study, this
money _did_ go to the schools. The whole quote:

"But it does seem that certain types of spending, especially on non-
instructional items like capital improvements and support services, make a
significant contribution. In other words, providing better physical and social
environments for poor kids helps boost their performance relative to their
richer peers."

To me, your comment sounds like it's neglecting the fact that this study found
performance benefit from giving more money to poor schools.

~~~
mdorazio
I have to disagree. Capital improvements and support services are very
different investments than your typical school funding for supplies, teacher
salaries, etc., which are the kinds of items the title implies. Improving
infrastructure and community services don't even have to come out of the
school's own initiatives - those can be funded via any of a number of
community improvement programs that have indirect benefits to schools. The
article failed to prove to me that giving the money to schools is better than
giving it to other programs that would do the same kinds of things.

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jrcii
Here's our spending on ed, virtually the highest in the world
[https://polisonic.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/education20spe...](https://polisonic.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/education20spending.jpg)

Here are our scores, among the worst
[https://softwarestrategies.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/image...](https://softwarestrategies.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/image.png)

The problem with our education system is not a lack of money.

~~~
bsder
The problem with our system is not _ONLY_ a lack of money.

Part of it is the monetary allocation. Property taxes are the primary school
funding mechanism, and they allocate the most money where it is least needed.

Part of it is socioeconomic. We allocate the same amount of money as much
smaller countries with more homogeneous populations and much less poverty.

Part of it is societal. The best scores come from societies that value
teachers and knowledge. Having a large anti-education population hurts your
chance of educating effectively. If you segment the US into different areas,
you find that the Northeast is more competitive with world scores while the
Southeast is vastly worse than even these averages suggest.

~~~
rayiner
> Part of it is the monetary allocation. Property taxes are the primary school
> funding mechanism, and they allocate the most money where it is least
> needed.

Less than half of school funding comes from local property taxes. Slightly
more than half comes from state or federal support, which is overwhelmingly
directed at poor school districts. In 45 states, the poorest school districts
get more money than the richest:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-
richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts).

> Part of it is socioeconomic. We allocate the same amount of money as much
> smaller countries with more homogeneous populations and much less poverty.

We allocate staggering amounts of money to the poorest school districts. D.C.
spends triple the OECD average on its overwhelmingly low-income student
population. And test scores are terrible.

Education as a remedy for social problems is a failed experiment. As a
society, we like to lean on education as a way to make up for the sins of our
past, but education is never going to fix inner cities victimized by
historical segregation, deindustrialization, and social collapse. Nice
facilities and well-paid teachers aren't going to help kids who live in
communities where parental power vacuums have left gangs as the ones in charge
of the social structure.

~~~
bsder
> Education as a remedy for social problems is a failed experiment.

Education is simply one part. And education is actually one of the most cost
effective. I can't find the study, but for every year you can keep a child in
school, the probability of their getting into criminal trouble drops by
something like 15%.

> education is never going to fix inner cities victimized by historical
> segregation, deindustrialization, and social collapse.

You say this like it doesn't affect you. This is coming to us _ALL_.
Deindustrialization and social collapse is rife in rural areas, too. It's why
there are so many angry people in this US election.

If we don't figure this out, and soon, _ALL_ of us are going to be in this
same boat.

~~~
rayiner
> You say this like it doesn't affect you.

I say this as someone who has spent the last five years living or working in
downtown New Rochelle, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. Each of
these cities spends more (in some cases, a lot more) per pupil than the
affluent suburb where I grew up. And it's not doing anything to help these
kids.

> If we don't figure this out, and soon, ALL of us are going to be in this
> same boat.

We're not willing to do what it takes to fix the problem. What people keep
voting for is separate but equal: give those 90% low-income minority school
districts more and more money hoping that fixes things. Nobody is willing to
put into place measures to actually integrate those populations into the
broader community. Here's an idea: instead of creating urban ghettos by
concentrating welfare spending in the inner cities, why not spread it out?
Build housing projects in wealthy suburbs so kids can go to schools where
their peers and the community put high value on education. Measures that might
actually break the cycle of poverty are a total no-go even in "liberal"
places.

~~~
nitrogen
I think what you suggest (regarding integration) is in the right direction,
but simply moving people around wouldn't be near enough. You will have
opposition from all sides. You would have to limit your "integrations" to a
very small percentage of the local population, or they would just bring their
drug and gang problems with them. You have to deal with the accusation that
you are trying to destroy a culture, be it farm culture, urban culture, ethnic
culture, whatever.

All in all, it seems like the current divisions in society have developed very
strong memetic immunizations against thoughts of integration, and I don't see
how you overcome that.

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nugget
If I was a billionaire I think I'd create boarding schools near urban ghettos
and offer pre-K through 12th grade education for free to groups of kids who
would otherwise have almost no chance in life. Have the kids go home on the
weekends (if they want) but be able to control their environment the rest of
the time.

~~~
tnuc
Something like this has been tried before. It results in the students being
institutionalized and prepared for prison.

[http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/boarding-school-
syndrome](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/boarding-school-syndrome)

Maybe lifting the people of the urban ghettos out of the poverty trap might be
a good start.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
With little to no education that is quite difficult. There is a serious
cultural failing occurring in urban ghettos and until people want to discuss
it, nothing will change. For an excellent look at how culture has destroyed a
School System and Prevented its change watch Dan Rather's "A National
Disgrace" a 2 hour special on the failures of Detroit Public Schools and the
culture controlling them. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xypiZ-
hqdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xypiZ-hqdY)

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greydius
I don't know about the rest of the US, but I grew up in a state where the
school districts are funded by local property tax. As you can probably guess,
this has the effect of making schools in poor areas overcrowded and
underfunded, while schools in affluent areas spend millions on indoor pools
and turf football fields.

~~~
seivan
This isn't true in Sweden. My school got most funds per student and still went
downhill. iPads, expensive computes and it still can't increase graduate
numbers.

At some point, culture matters.

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sandworm101
>> During that period, the U.S. had a large influx of low-skilled immigrants,
who are bound to rely on public schools more and parents less.

I've read the opposite, that immigrant families actually spend more time
focusing on education outside of school.

>> There also was a large increase in single parenthood, which probably means
those kids get less education at home as well.

This too seems odd. It sounds logical that a single parent might have less
time to educate kids while at home, but there are so many factors. Not all
single parents work, at least not all full time. And having two parents
doesn't mean that they aren't both working, or that they spend any more time
with educating kids than a single parent. It is just too simple to assume that
single parent = less education at home.

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bjornsing
I can't help thinking education could be the best possible public investment
we could make in this ultra low interest rate environment...

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
Simply pouring Money into a School District without fixing the fundamental
failings of the school district is a terrible investment.

Case in point: Dearborn vs Detroit.

School Districts Border one another.

Detroit gets $16,138 per student and Dearborn $12,128.

Detroit Public School District consistently ranks in the bottom 5% of school
districts statewide and Dearborn in the top 10% of school districts in the
state. If money were the solution why is Detroit not on par with Dearborn
despite Detroit spending 30% more per student?

[https://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx](https://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx)

~~~
greeneggs
From your own link (great source!), it says that the expenditures on
instruction are, respectively, $7714 and $7073 per student per year. But
Detroit spends much more on support services and food services.

> If money were the solution why is Detroit not on par with Dearborn despite
> Detroit spending 30% more per student?

I don't know that anybody is arguing that more money is "the solution,"
although surely it must be part of any solution. Even if more money was the
solution, I don't know why 30% more would be the magic number.

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dnautics
The data can also be interpreted: a court order to fix your damn school
correlates with improvement. It's hard to believe that it's just money, some
of these poorer urban districts have the highest per student educational
spending, so a court order to spend money on students to me suggests
"redirecting financial resources away from corruption"

~~~
p_eter_p
I have looked everywhere for a national dollar per student database. Do you
know if such a thing exists?

~~~
michaelbuddy
In the U.S. the census appears to handle that. I'm not any kind of expert on
this data, but try this PDF here:
[http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/13f33pub.pdf](http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/13f33pub.pdf)
PDF Page 26

How I got there: [http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-
educa...](http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-
spending-per-pupil-data.html)
[http://www.census.gov/govs/school/](http://www.census.gov/govs/school/)

------
bsder
Edit: Whoops, confused articles. NYTimes One:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-
fl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html)

One thing that people are overlooking from the article:

> And it has had Mr. Rosen’s focus and financing over 21 years.

How many funding experiments have been carried on for _two decades_?

