For the purpose of this discussion, children, we would like to bypass the question of how much K-12 public education should cost globally. It is what it is.
The question is this: In a given state, how should the state's education money be doled out to the school districts? (Assume that the state pays all of the cost, and the local school district has no taxing power).
The simple answer would be, take the total amount available from the state, divide that total by the number of K-12 students, and give each school district a proportionate amount, depending on how many students it has.
But that doesn't work, does it? What about rural districts that only have a couple hundred kids? A per-kid allocation would be insufficient to cover the "overhead" cost of even having school buildings. And urban districts that have lots of kids would be disproportionately rewarded.
What about a sliding scale that starts high and decreases the per-kid amount as the school population increases. That might be fair.
But the Powers that Be in Government and in Education especially like to think that "EQUALITY" is the ultimate goal of every global school system, so they want to send MORE money to the poorest-performing school districts in the VAIN HOPE that allocating money that way will eliminate or at least minimize the INEQUALITY of results.
But INEQUALITY is not just the product of money spent on the local school. Similar people tend to live in the same areas, and if you want to get biological about it, they tend to marry each other and make babies that are just like them, only more so. Thus, if you have a geographical area where the people are poor, poorly educated, poorly employed, and relatively unaccomplished, the people in that area are going to tend to have children who are - what can I say? - not the sharpest tacks in the figurative drawer. And vice versa. In my school district, for example, the average number of college degrees per household is "more than two." Our kids tend to be "college material." Test scores reflect that.
No spending formula from the State is going to change the aforesaid facts. They could pour all the money in the world into the former school districts and those kids might, if it is successful, end up being, on average, mediocre students. Better than the "bad" students they would have been otherwise, but not breaking any academic records, for the most part.
But the current situation seems perverse and "unfair." Kids in the "rich" neighborhoods have schools that are new and clean, and have all the latest gee-gaws, and highly-paid teachers, and a big impressive football stadium, and so forth. While the inner-cities have schools and teachers that are...not like that.
But those kids are citizens of the same state, and it's the state that guarantees them their K-12 education, not the local school district, so how can "we" justify providing a "state" education to some kids that is virtually a private-school education, whole providing to other kids an education that...isn't?
How shall we allocate our education dollars? Should local school districts be "relieved of the burden" of education, so that the state can allocate the money more "fairly"? And how should it be allocated? I personally don't know.
The question is this: In a given state, how should the state's education money be doled out to the school districts? (Assume that the state pays all of the cost, and the local school district has no taxing power).
The simple answer would be, take the total amount available from the state, divide that total by the number of K-12 students, and give each school district a proportionate amount, depending on how many students it has.
But that doesn't work, does it? What about rural districts that only have a couple hundred kids? A per-kid allocation would be insufficient to cover the "overhead" cost of even having school buildings. And urban districts that have lots of kids would be disproportionately rewarded.
What about a sliding scale that starts high and decreases the per-kid amount as the school population increases. That might be fair.
But the Powers that Be in Government and in Education especially like to think that "EQUALITY" is the ultimate goal of every global school system, so they want to send MORE money to the poorest-performing school districts in the VAIN HOPE that allocating money that way will eliminate or at least minimize the INEQUALITY of results.
But INEQUALITY is not just the product of money spent on the local school. Similar people tend to live in the same areas, and if you want to get biological about it, they tend to marry each other and make babies that are just like them, only more so. Thus, if you have a geographical area where the people are poor, poorly educated, poorly employed, and relatively unaccomplished, the people in that area are going to tend to have children who are - what can I say? - not the sharpest tacks in the figurative drawer. And vice versa. In my school district, for example, the average number of college degrees per household is "more than two." Our kids tend to be "college material." Test scores reflect that.
No spending formula from the State is going to change the aforesaid facts. They could pour all the money in the world into the former school districts and those kids might, if it is successful, end up being, on average, mediocre students. Better than the "bad" students they would have been otherwise, but not breaking any academic records, for the most part.
But the current situation seems perverse and "unfair." Kids in the "rich" neighborhoods have schools that are new and clean, and have all the latest gee-gaws, and highly-paid teachers, and a big impressive football stadium, and so forth. While the inner-cities have schools and teachers that are...not like that.
But those kids are citizens of the same state, and it's the state that guarantees them their K-12 education, not the local school district, so how can "we" justify providing a "state" education to some kids that is virtually a private-school education, whole providing to other kids an education that...isn't?
How shall we allocate our education dollars? Should local school districts be "relieved of the burden" of education, so that the state can allocate the money more "fairly"? And how should it be allocated? I personally don't know.
