I’ve also seen US teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock classrooms.
I spent a lot of time in European schools and I’ve never heard of teachers having to stock their own classrooms or fundraise for things like playgrounds, etc.
Many people here are talking about under-funding of education in the US. If you look at expenditure per student vs GDP per capita, the US is actually doing fairly well when compared to the rest of the world. Our problems aren’t funding related (though I wouldn’t argue against more funding). Our problems are allocation and priority related.
See here for data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
I do construction. My company is building a new $40,000,000 school in a town with a population of 143.
Wow, how many students are they expecting? I assume they’ll be pulling from a lot of the surrounding area.
That I really don’t know online it says 97 kids in k-12. It’s in a very rural area and the second phase of construction not in the original bid for the school is housing so when they hire more teachers they have a place to live.
While I don’t think it’s bad they are getting a new school but going with the op it is kind of crazy when they can do that but my kids teachers ask us to supply the classroom with all kinds of stuff.
I wonder if there are some holes in their methodology with regards to how people are paid in the US vs Europe. Like are they factoring in government benefits of teachers and staff that aren’t part of work like they are in the US. Salary and Benefits is a huge part of the cost, as well as land and construction costs.
That’s true. They may not be factoring in government benefits. Things like universal health care.
Well, healthcare and other benefits aren’t likely to account for the discrepancy, as pretty much all teachers get benefits (with the exception of adjuncts at the university level, who are absolutely fucked).
My understanding is salaries are higher in the US in part because of the lack of universal healthcare, and other things that end up coming out of people’s pockets when compared to Europe. I did a little digging on the site, and it does look like salary and benefits are up to 80% of the cost.
I suspect it has more to do with the stark wealth differences in the US which are vastly higher than in Europe, especially because the above includes both public and private education. The US may spend a lot on the mean student, but not much on the median student.
I went to a really well-funded public school, and a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they’re basically paying for education twice. Rich American parents spend tons of money on their kids’ education. It would be interesting to see a map of spending per student and see how it is in poor areas.
Not any more thanks to the Republican pushed school voucher system!
I think your last sentence touched on the real problem. Schools are funded based on local property taxes. So if you’re in a poor area your schools are poor. It’s like Jim Crow and segregaron but legal
The problem is multiplied by the fact that the people who are supposed to figure out how to be efficient with the money are either elected or paid way below market rate. So either way, they don’t have the skills for it.