Because education alone in a vacuum won't fix the issues.
Even if the current model was working, just continuing to invest money in it while ignoring other issues like early childhood nutrition, a good and healthy home environment, environmental impacts, etc. will just continue to fail people.
Schooling alone isn't going to help the kid with a crappy home life, with poor parents who can't afford proper nutrition, and without the proper tools to develop the mindset needed to learn (because these tools were never taught by the parents, and/or they are too focused on simply surviving).
We, as a society, need to stop allowing people to be in a situation where they can't focus on education because they are too focused on working and surviving.
A lot of that funding in the US goes to pay teachers money they then use to pay for health insurance -- which in other countries is often provided by the tax base at large and not counted as an education expense.
That's half true. You have to think about cost of living, you can't just compare across the globe like that. And especially opportunity cost. In the US, teacher pay lags behind similarly educated professionals.
But you're right after a certain point other factors matter more than simple $ per student. Unfortunately one of those factors is teacher pay <=> teacher quality.
From the teacher's I've talked to, it's teacher work conditions related to student behavior that are creating more problems than anything else.
Disruptive students in particular who negatively impact everyone around them but for whatever reason, are frequently not removed from the environment. It's also driving a lot of good teachers into retirement.
When you see clusters of poor performance, my guess is that it's associated with regional policy creating a poor environment rather than a total absence of quality teachers.
Literally look at any education chart and it's straight up better than wage growth for the last 70 years.
Further, the statement is about as nuanced as "the universe is just atoms". For example, I come from New Orleans where since Katrina they have effectively been 100% Charter schools (that's privatized). It has been a total disaster as not only did it not change literally any statistic for the better, it totally wrecked the local policy atmosphere. Now that shit is in 30 other states. Those "schools" get the same amount of funding (sometimes more!) and are worse in literally every meaningful measurement for society.
What measurements show the charter schools are worse?
Locals demand charter schools when the existing schools are already failing but the politics of a larger district make it impossible to meaningfully change anything.
It’s been a couple of years since I looked into Louisiana’s charters. When I last looked most of what I saw was political propaganda (from both proponents and opponents).
EDIT: I looked into it. Charters appear to experience the same performance spread (approximately) as district schools where negative performance is primarily associated with poverty.
And that makes the point…school funding is not the problem. The environment outside of school for the child is the problem. Pumping money into the schools isn’t going to get the benefit because it can’t affect outside factors. Money is better allocated elsewhere.
Relevant excerpt:
> Older studies align with this nuance: A 2013 analysis found 86% of Louisiana charters outperforming peers in reading/math, with spillover benefits. But a 2023 legislative audit linked poor results to poverty—71% of students are economically disadvantaged statewide, and concentrations above 80% predict lower scores. Notably, 85 of 138 rated charters earned D’s or F’s, and some high performers enrolled fewer low-income students than legally required.
We need different models and then to invest in the successes, over and over again…forever.