One of the major factors to consider here is that public schools in the US are not equally funded by number of students. Instead, most of the funding is provided by state and local property taxes, meaning that richer areas where houses are worth a lot more, get much better funding for their schools. So while those rich areas’ school funding is probably much higher than the global median, the poorer areas’ school funding is likely much lower, in a very high cost of living country in general.
The other factor to also consider is that public schools in the US have fairly extensive athletic programs, meaning that they spend a lot of the funds to build and maintain things like American Football
stadiumsfields, swimming pools, etc., as opposed to only funding actual academic education.Edit, I’ve retracted the link about teacher vs coach salaries because it’s about College sports, not primary and secondary schools. I still haven’t found a good source for this info regarding those.
PS: Aside from fundraisers, it’s fairly common to hear teachers telling stories of having to spend their own money to buy supplies for their classes.
PPS: It’s also common to hear stories of poor families doing everything they can to move to richer areas just so their kids can benefit from the much better-funded schools. I’ve even heard of situations where they will register their kids with the address of a relative who lives in a better-funded area, for the same reason.
The other factor to also consider is that public schools in the US have fairly extensive athletic programs, meaning that they spend a lot of the funds to build and maintain things like American Football stadiums fields, swimming pools, etc., as opposed to only funding actual academic education.
I bought my lab supplies. Bare minimum $50-200 a month in supplies. Lab chemicals, pencils and notebooks for students that didn’t have any.
My classroom looked out over the fancy new football and soccer field. One of the middle schools had a field that local semi pro teams would rent out. The district couldn’t even fund busing - we’d have students show up 1-2 hours late every day because of the buses.
Small towns will fund bonds for football fields and cleats; they don’t give a damn about anything else. If you are good enough coach, you can literally show your penis to students and the administration will cover it up, then quietly help you get a position in a new town.
Cover up the fact or the penis?
The fact. He had been moved from school to school before.
He made his student athletes work out naked and showed them his dick to show them “what a real man is like.” It’s amazing how many news articles leave out those details.
Also the fact that the Governor and the State Superintendent are known to be golfing buddies with Ringalings superintendent…. It’s almost as if Oklahoma systemically covers up the abuse of children….
Jeepers creepers, this is so disheartening. I’m sorry that you had to experience that!
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Have to teach kids to beg for the bare essentials early in life. That way they’ll never know it could be different.
All you have to do is look at how much of the collected money actually guess to the school then ask what happens to the rest. That’s why.
Not the only reason, but the cost of living is higher in the U.S. than most other locales on the planet.
That was my first reaction. I didn’t find the global average spending number reported by the OP, but according to this page, the 2019 average spending of $15,500 per student (38% higher than OECD average) did consider purchasing power.
Looking at the global median isn’t a good comparison, for starters. Many of those school systems aren’t comparable.
That said, there’s not likely to be one reason. I could guess at them, but I’d rather not since some will inevitably be wrong.
It is socialism thinly disguised as capitalism.
PSA, whenever someone asks you to buy something for a fundraiser just donate instead. Especially if you don’t want what they’re selling. They’ll get 100% of that instead of like… I honestly don’t even know, but it can’t be more than 25%.
If I don’t want something, I give nothing. Most fundraisers are pure extortion, and I can’t be bothered to check if something is legit or lining someone’s pocket. “No” is a full sentence.
Obviously, I’m not saying you’re obligated to. I’m saying if you want to financially support them donations are better.
30-50% if its an actual physical item is pretty normal. If it’s something like a discount card or coupon book, profit approaches 90%.
girlscout cookies?
Dry, stale, over priced.
Wouldn’t bother.
Just donate the money directly to that Girl Scout group.
why would I support the people? I just want the cookies and to see the struggle of delivery.
What about them?
without digging into the numbers, i can pretty confidently say that schools are more than 30% more expensive than the global median in the US. staffing costs especially.
This is a good question. I live in the USA and most fundraisers are for clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities. But we spend so much $ for our kids schooling, and I believe in other countries like Japan the school will actually give clubs money to spend on supplies, so they don’t need to do this. Why are our schools so expensive and give so little back to the students?
Also our teachers are underpaid for the work they do. So are the support staff. Cleaners, IT, all underpaid.
Do you know who isn’t underpaid? The administrators. Our schools have district offices with lots of overpaid administrators. I work in IT at a school and I make the same as the cleaners do. I can’t afford a car, and live in a trailer park. During the last round of contract negotiations, the superintendent negotiated a 7% annual raise on top of his already six-figure salary. My group? We got 2.5% which was less than inflation. It was during COVID and inflation was about 7%.
Where is all the money going? Look at the district offices. We have a problem with corruption in this country. Everyone wants to be a feudal lord and rule over the serfs. All our money is going to create and prop up an aristocracy, which has so far managed to hide itself from public view. We need to shed light on the aristocrats.
At my school, the books are falling apart and missing pages. The wifi barely works. The computers are missing keys. The bathrooms are infested with roaches. The outside looks like a prison yard.
But our administrators got themselves some fancy new offices this year.
Honestly it’s not the administrators. They usually reduce overall headcount by performing the tasks of multiple other dedicated people with one role.
The answer of where is the money going? Contractors. Everything is done by contractors now because it’s easy to sever and it allows organizations to focus on one thing they’re good at. Do you need janitorial staff or do you need to keep things clean? Well the answer is you need to keep things clean - so how? Just pay the contractors because the school board got bribed. Sure, it turns out the contractors cost 3x the cost of a dedicated janitorial staff in the long run, but they were quicker to set up and the board wanted a turnkey solution.
Because the money goes to do-nothing administrators’ salaries, as well as urgent purchases as a result of bad or zero planning
Likely a similar reason that the us spends more per capita then just about anyone else on healthcare but get some of the worst results, pure greed and corruption.
And on Military and is getting dog walked by a failed state on a global stage. Number one military spend by every metric and they managed to lose the cold war 30 years after it “ended”.
Correct me if I am wrong but they have also lost every conflict they have been in where they had to be an occupying force. The largest military spending in the world and so far they have failed vs:
- Korea
- Vietnam
- Afghanistan
- Iran
- Iraq
- Niger
- 1/2 of Russia (the civil war in 1918)
- Indonesia
- Laos
- Cuba (well that one is more on the CIA)
- Cambodia
- Somalia
I am sure I am missing some, but its wild to go though the many many conflicts the us has been involved in.
Not American, and I have no factual answer but I assume it’s because the people at the top just take all the money and leave the schools to fend for themselves. Typical corporate nonsense.
You’d think so, and while you’re right that the people at the top make way too much money, docking their entire salary at a large district like mine would only be enough to fund maaaaaaaaaaaaybe just under 5% of the schools in our district. And then you’d be left without leadership. If you cut everyone in my pay scale, you’d have enough to fund all the schools and then some, but you wouldn’t have teachers, custodians, tech workers, etc.
But here’s something interesting: during the pandemic, since athletics funds were already allocated and athletic events were cancelled, we were allowed to use those funds as we saw fit within the district. Suddenly, we were able to feed every student and staff member for free. Yee haw, welcome to Texan education…
Public schools are run by the local government, so “corporate nonsense” doesn’t really make sense. They aren’t corporations.
School board officials are frequently bribed to hire expensive contractors.
I’m sure that’s true. It’s also not at all related to my point that “schools are run by local governments and so are by definition not corporations”.
No my point is they offload too much to corporations and thus are beholden to the same concerns of those corporations by proxy.
Criminally underfunded, plus capitalism as a value.
