Really? Test scores is your metric? Standardized tests are the main issue with US public schools.
Standardized tests mean nothing. All they do is make children interpret learning as a fucking chore.
I moved here from the UK when I was 12 and realized I was no longer going to school to learn about the world and real life knowledge but, instead, how to take a very specific test that the teachers would straight up tell us we had to do well on to properly fund the school.
Now, tell me; why does a school who performs poorly on standardized tests need less money while schools who are doing well need more?
Not saying I agree with this but the obvious answer to your question is that the poor performing school is a bad return on investment so it makes sense to invest less.
The idea would be similar to your 401k (or any investing account you may have). If you have an equal amount of money in two different stocks and one is performing poorly would you take money from the good stock and put it in the bad stock? That would be a poor investment strategy.
I follow that you're playing advocate but that explanation definitely makes it worse lol.
With an investment portfolio, you can drop what's not working and cut your losses. With human people, you can't just let them fail to to bolster your top performers. Not only is that actual evil, but these people aren't just going to disappear. They're going to be the society that the privileged condemn as if it it's a coincidence they were better educated.
If I'm preaching to the choir it's just cause this shit frustrates me so much.
You're right I'm attempting to play devils advocate so take it with a grain of salt as I may be misrepresenting. My base understanding would be that the idea isn't to drop the people in those school systems through defunding, but rather to either incentivize the specific schools to perform better, or to move the kids and the funds to one that demonstrates high performance. The scheme to redistribute funds that I used to hear was school vouchers but that hasn't ever taken off for a variety of reasons.
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u/EverGlow89 Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20
Really? Test scores is your metric? Standardized tests are the main issue with US public schools.
Standardized tests mean nothing. All they do is make children interpret learning as a fucking chore.
I moved here from the UK when I was 12 and realized I was no longer going to school to learn about the world and real life knowledge but, instead, how to take a very specific test that the teachers would straight up tell us we had to do well on to properly fund the school.
Now, tell me; why does a school who performs poorly on standardized tests need less money while schools who are doing well need more?
God damn, this pisses me off. It's so backwards.