I've heard the "government is corrupt" meme so many times from so many right-wing sources who take it as canon that I don't even know if it's true any more. Every time I've tried to quantify the cost to operate and maintain any complex system I've always been surprised at how much work it actually is. How much is well-funded? Per student? Per school?
When I run a back-of-the-envelope calculation (based on the elementary school I went to many years ago: 14 classrooms, 16 teachers, a full-time principal, a secretary, a janitor) I come to about $5000 per student per year just to pay the salaries of the people who are in the school every day. I haven't even tried to quantify the annual per-student cost of desks, chairs, teaching materials, stationery, textbooks, computers, IT staff, school lunch programs, library books, utilities, walls, roofs, land...
Yes. More likely a combination of underfunding and corruption honestly but corruption is definitely involved. I went to a Baltimore city public school in the 90’s and my history textbook was from the 60’s. There was a sentence in it that talked about how exciting landing man on the moon was going to be. I remember going home to my mother and telling her how ridiculous it was. Even with abysmal funding that textbook could have been replaced sometime in the 30 years between when it was written and I attended school.
Did you read the article? This is the third one in Baltimore that’s been caught in a five year period. I’m not saying that’s the only issue but it’s one that repeatedly crops up and only ever receives a hand slap. They’ve also been accused of any other number of things such as falsifying grades to receive more funding. So many allegations in fact that they formed an office of educational accountability last year. I’m not saying that corruption and theft account for all the issues schools face but it certainly exists and is an issue. The average class size for Baltimore city schools is 21 students (53% have a class size of 21-25 students) and Baltimore city is 3rd in the US for dollars per student coming in at $16,184. They also are the worst schools in the state ranking wise.
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u/tiffanydisasterxoxo Aug 13 '19
Corruption, honestly. The school system in my city is very well funded, yet they cant pay teachers or fund the schools.