[NEWS] Annoying Orange cutting budgets of public school programs by 6 billion, afterschool

[Ninja Decoy]

Schools spend more on athletics than academics, to where every school Ive been in since middle school has had really stuffty computer, books, desks, and all around just old nearly broken stuff yet every single school had brand new equipment for the sports teams. Hell I think one of my high schools even made a new stadium in town.

The problem isnt that schools get too much funding, its that they spend said funding on athletics because it makes them even more money.

I dont see it changing even with the removal of $6bil, they will still find a way to neglect the academics and fund the athletics.

[Ad Bot]

[Badspot]

No, I think that if we want to approve more funding for schools, we have to be more careful about where it goes to. Less hiring more pencil pushers in the department offices, more hiring of good teachers and funding student enrichment programs. Hell, if we put the money into better music education and technology, there is a huge body of research out there which suggests it would help student outcomes.

This sounds like a really good set of points to bring to your local school board.  I don't see why federal funds need to go to this. 

But you aren't saying 'cut the money off from the wasteful parts', you're saying 'cut the money off from everything'.

Yes.  Because that is the only control that is possible.  The alternative would be to have some kind of federal micromanagement of individual school hiring and spending - which would just create even more waste.  Cut the whole thing off, deal with your own school system and don't stick me with the bill when I'm not even in the same state.

The policy that you're supporting here is literally just the inverted-version of bad education spending hikes. It's just changing funding all across the board without really paying attention to where the money goes.

Micromanagement of funding isn't my job.  You're buying crack, so I'm cutting you off.  Don't blame me for not forcing you to buy groceries every week.

Our Republican government in Arizona loves to raise up Basis Scottsdale on a pedestal for what Arizona students can be if we just make everyone go to charters and private schools, but what they won't tell you is that they kick out any student that doesn't pass precalculus before entering high school.

Dumb kids can just go to a crappier school.  I don't see the problem here. 

So yeah, maybe we'll see growth in the top 10% of students, but huge numbers of kids will drop out who could have otherwise gotten a high school diploma at a properly-funded public high school. What a great improvement.

They wouldn't have to drop out if they went to a school that matched their abilities.  Either learn precalc or go to the dumb kids school.  Stop pretending that everyone is equal.

[SeventhSandwich]

This sounds like a really good set of points to bring to your local school board.  I don't see why federal funds need to go to this. 

I like the idea of federal funding for education because it can at least act as a safeguard from crazy state budget cuts. My school fired some teachers and cut down on a few programs as a result of Ducey's cuts. I don't really want to think about what would have happened with zero federal funding.

Yes.  Because that is the only control that is possible.  The alternative would be to have some kind of federal micromanagement of individual school hiring and spending - which would just create even more waste.  Cut the whole thing off, deal with your own school system and don't stick me with the bill when I'm not even in the same state.

So we shouldn't even attempt to put in some government oversight with education spending? Just nuke the entire thing before even seeing whether a cheaper and less drastic option is viable?

Micromanagement of funding isn't my job.  You're buying crack, so I'm cutting you off.  Don't blame me for not forcing you to buy groceries every week.

Like five or six pages ago, you were tacitly defending Annoying Orange's decision to spend $25bil on a wall. A wall which, according to basically all experts, will be wholly ineffective at stopping human/drug trafficking.

Or in other words, the executive branch wants border security to buy some crack. Wanna defund it?

Dumb kids can just go to a crappier school.  I don't see the problem here. 

They wouldn't have to drop out if they went to a school that matched their abilities.  Either learn precalc or go to the dumb kids school.  Stop pretending that everyone is equal

Crappier schools do not exist if you completely get rid of educational funding. Market principles will artificially select for the best schools with the best students, meaning the stuffty schools either close down or become entirely defunct. This means that people with below-average performance, poor kids, and kids born into the wrong district are essentially just forgeted if they can't hack it at a school with extreme standards for academic excellence.

I had a mutual friend back in high school who struggled with my school's academic rigor but wasn't at all dumb. He went to my school because he was the son of a single-mom Filipino immigrant that wanted him to have the best possible shot in life. He was very average in intelligence, and eventually transferred to a public school, where he did a lot better with a slightly easier rigor and graduated with a diploma.

In school-voucher-paradise-land, his options would have been as follows:

• Continue suffering at my school and then later drop out because of unsatisfactory GPA
• Go study at a now-defunct, now-defunded 'dumb kid school' where he would learn nothing
• Drop out straight away

Before the advent of public schools, the argument was 'dumb kids can just go work on their family farm'. We changed that philosophy since it kept our country from being educated. Why regress?

[Nonnel]

an unstoppable force meets an immovable object

[Conan]

im liking this argument as im getting a better, wider perspective on this issue.

[King Tøny]

Mexico isn't paying for the wall we gotta build it somehow.

[Otis Da HousKat]

Crappier schools do not exist if you completely get rid of educational funding. Market principles will artificially select for the best schools with the best students, meaning the stuffty schools either close down or become entirely defunct.

I would think there are enough stupid people in the world for the market to support lower grade schools.

[Conan]

I would think there are enough stupid people in the world for the market to support lower grade schools.

except it would be far less profitable. there's enough poor people in the world to support one large shark loan providing company, but if you have the money to run that you could probably run a more legitimate business that makes comparable money.

pretty sure the point here is that you'll end up "tracking" a lot of the students, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy for poor students to do poorly in school and perpetuating their financial and social status. id say more on this but im on mobile rn

[Operator¹]

Schools spend more on athletics than academics, to where every school Ive been in since middle school has had really stuffty computer, books, desks, and all around just old nearly broken stuff yet every single school had brand new equipment for the sports teams. Hell I think one of my high schools even made a new stadium in town.

The problem isnt that schools get too much funding, its that they spend said funding on athletics because it makes them even more money.

I dont see it changing even with the removal of $6bil, they will still find a way to neglect the academics and fund the athletics.

It was the opposite at my high school, the administration didn't fund athletics well because they were more focused on academic performance. While I was there the sports teams were having a hard time getting replacements for broken equipment. Despite this, we still had a bunch of old computers that weren't replaced. The school district also seems to be somewhat incompetent because one of the teachers there told me that the school had ordered a CNC machine, but it was stuck in a warehouse for some reason, and I guess the district didn't want to send it over to the school. This change would only hurt the school.

[Corderlain]

Yes.  Because that is the only control that is possible.  The alternative would be to have some kind of federal micromanagement of individual school hiring and spending - which would just create even more waste.  Cut the whole thing off, deal with your own school system and don't stick me with the bill when I'm not even in the same state.

Micromanagement of funding isn't my job.  You're buying crack, so I'm cutting you off.  Don't blame me for not forcing you to buy groceries every week.

I feel like this should be the only argument needed to be said. Anyone who's had to be independent and paid their own bills should understand this.

[Tezuni 2.0]

Good.  I pay just under a third of my income to federal taxes and a sizable chunk of that is sucked into bloated school systems. 

But on the other hand there are far more rampant spending that needs to be reigned in -- Annoying Orange wanting to increase the already ridiculously over-sized military budget by 50 some odd billion is insane.  We already spend more in defense than the next seven countries combined.  We pay for all the R&D into these technologies and then countries like China and Russia get those designs leaked or hacked not long after.

[joe411]

Here's the problem: Annoying Orange isn't picking and choosing which public schools are defunded. He's just defuding all of them.

So while the crack-buying schools are being rightly punished, the grocery-buying schools are unfairly given the same treatment.

[Kochieboy]

Schools spend more on athletics than academics, to where every school Ive been in since middle school has had really stuffty computer, books, desks, and all around just old nearly broken stuff yet every single school had brand new equipment for the sports teams. Hell I think one of my high schools even made a new stadium in town.

The problem isnt that schools get too much funding, its that they spend said funding on athletics because it makes them even more money.

I dont see it changing even with the removal of $6bil, they will still find a way to neglect the academics and fund the athletics.

It was the opposite at my high school, the administration didn't fund athletics well because they were more focused on academic performance. While I was there the sports teams were having a hard time getting replacements for broken equipment. Despite this, we still had a bunch of old computers that weren't replaced. The school district also seems to be somewhat incompetent because one of the teachers there told me that the school had ordered a CNC machine, but it was stuck in a warehouse for some reason, and I guess the district didn't want to send it over to the school. This change would only hurt the school.

Why don't people just, oh I don't know, find a balance between this stuff?

[McZealot]

not sure why Badspot seems so sure that regulating school spending is a bad idea. He says it would create 'even more waste' but I'd be happy to see an extremely small amount of spending (probably less than 1%) allotted to public education go towards ensuring we put more money towards actual education and less towards sports. as it is now I attend a school that can't afford paper. teachers are forced to ask for donations from the class--meanwhile, we are able to construct multiple sports stadiums and maintain 4-5 athletic gyms. he's making a comparison to a homeless person wasting money on crack--and I totally agree--except he's not suggesting penalizing *my* school, perhaps to encourage them to do better with their funds--he's encouraging loving over every single public school in the US. it's like publicly executing all the homeless because the aforementioned dude spent too much money on crack. the end result is far worse than any misguided potential gains.