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Originally Posted by SEC_Chick
Perhaps it is my conservative news media bias showing, but are there studies that show that money improves outcomes? I am aware of many failures, but am receptive to stories of success.
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We both can Google for studies, but I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that money tends to improve outcomes. There certainly are school districts that can waste funds, but those are edge cases. Everyone thinks that having more teachers per student improves outcomes, controlling for other factors. Everyone thinks that paying teachers more money will attract better teachers, controlling for other factors. Or are markets in education somehow immune from the principles of basic economics that apply elsewhere?
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I went to a public school that was pretty highly subsidized by the federal government at the time, due to special circumstances, and had many highly educated teachers with advanced degrees from Ivies (mainly because they had social science degrees and were otherwise unemployable in the town), but for many reasons my personal experience with public education is not likely to be replicated anywhere else.
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I went to a private school before high school, and then switched to a public school. I went to college with classmates from the private school, and didn't feel that my years in public school disadvantaged me in any way. My kids go to public schools which are fine. I've been lucky with public schools because I've lived in expensive neighborhoods, relatively speaking. A big part of the reason those neighborhoods are desirable is that the public schools are better, and part of the reason they're better is that most education is locally funded. Poor people get crappy schools and rich people get great schools. Rich people want it that way, because they want to buy advantages for their children. For that reason, rich people and the politicians elected by them will stand in the way of anything the government might do that would actually level the playing field, not least to protect their investments in their houses.
