Ray From Cleveland
Diamond Member
- Aug 16, 2015
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If you would do your research, you would find that our schools have a wide gap in funding between the big liberal cities and on the coasts when compared to flyover country. You also cannot compare the US to other countries because provide bus services to school not found in most of the world, which relies on public transportation. We also pay teacher's medical, which is not found anywhere with "universal healthcare". Other counries do not fund special education to the level anywhere near what we do in this country.
My school district in Florida supposedly had $11,000 per student average. The actual number was just over $4000.
For example, I had a student that required continuous medical monitoring by a registered nurse. He had a computer controlled wheelchair and voice synthesizer in order to communicate. Guess who paid that nurse's salary, paid for the wheelchair and computer system, not to mention a special education bus to transport him? The school did out of the total school funding. Why did we do this? He was a teenaged version of Stephen Hawking! He was an incredible mind trapped in a body that barely functioned. I loved that kid!
The point I was making is that throwing more money at the problem won't help very much. When somebody from another country tells me we don't "fund our schools enough" is rather insulting given how much we do spend.
Now as for financial inequity, I believe if you took kids from an upper-class neighborhood, and put them in these lower funded schools, they would continue to be good students. While at the same time, if you took those kids in lower-income areas, and sent them to those upper-middle-class areas to attend school, their grades won't be that much different either.
Money is not the solution to this problem.