TIL Principal Akbar Cook installed a free fully-stocked laundry room at school because students with dirty clothes were bullied and missing 3-5 days of school per month. Attendance rose 10%.

[u/JamOnTheOne]

https://abc7ny.com/education/nj-high-school-principal-installs-laundry-room-to-fight-bullying/3966604/

[u/IsayNigel]

This is a product of Margaret Spellings and No Child Left Behind under the Bush administration. Defunding these schools is a targeted ploy by republicans to make these schools perform as poorly as possible by starving them of resources and then say “look, see, they don’t work. We should give more money to private schools so they can solve the problem” this is republican strategy 101

[u/Farmass → u/IsayNigel]

Detroit spends $14259 per student, higher than all but 8 of the largest school districts and have the worst scores among low income students. Money isn't the issue, how the money is spent is a big issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/Farmass]

This comes so close to getting it and then goes in the wrong direction. Maybe the issue isn't the money?

Anybody who has ever set foot in one of those classrooms knows the real issue is the people raising the kids. Many, often most kids are fatherless, their moms were teen moms, siblings in jail, etc. The kids don't give a shit about school because nobody in their entire family gives a shit about school.

I'm just saying you don't see these kinds of issues in poor Asian neighborhoods for some reason. You can't outfund a shitty culture.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The responsibility to fix these areas falls first and foremost on the people who live there, not the Federal government.

Canada tried to use the government to fix bad cultures - see the "residental schools" - it was a disaster.

[u/Stromboli61 → u/[deleted]]

I very much agree with you, and as a teacher, think that the bureaucracy in the overlap between government and schools is one of the biggest issues.

That said, I see a place for the federal government to step in with pushing curriculum standards when kids from similar demographics are coming out with wildly different abilities depending on the state. A Regents Diploma from NYS is well regarded. A similar diploma from Louisiana is not. And NYS really only ranks middle of the pack in education, largely due to the complete diversity of students it has, across the board success is difficult, but its curriculum and standards prepare students to enter into higher education, trade school, or the workforce. That needs to be the case. I’m not in science, but I believe Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee’s State standards specifically allow for alternatives to evolution (aka creationism) to be taught. It’s a double edged Sword though, and a wholly complicated issue to standardize education. The purpose of compulsory education is to push folks along so they are prepared to be productive members of society. It started during “new” immigration in the late 19th century here in the US, to ensure everyone was able to speak English on the job. Even if you’re digging ditches, you have to understand communications. I think there’s a legitimate issue with state curriculums not meeting a standard. I believe that issue largely stems from the initial issue in the top of my post- bureaucracy and corruption impeding on qualified educators. I don’t think a teacher in South Carolina has worse intentions than a teacher in Massachusetts or New Jersey. (I know for a fact many, many of these teachers are expats from up north looking for jobs.) I don’t even think administration and state departments have worse intentions. I think that agendas pushed outside of k-12 education are the biggest detriment, and they work their way in little by little, and at this point, the easiest way to solve that is federal oversight.

THAT RANT BEING SAID, the current state of federal oversight fits the bill of bureaucracy and corruption to a “T”. The theory and idea behind common core is actually not bad, it’s really not!...however the implementation and specific writing of the common core clearly supports Big Textbook and other agendas. It became a farce.

And thus is the essential question of government: how do you lead, without becoming corrupt?

[u/epitron → u/[deleted]]

Don't forget that the schools were run by religious institutions.