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Re:The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore by unclebucknasty on Saturday December 31, 2016 @03:31PM (#13292993)
Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the suburban tax money going?

And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the state recently started pouring in money?

I mean, maybe there are some exceptions (perhaps partially gentrified cities where some tax base is moving back into cities at inflated prices?), but these would generally be outliers. Since wealthier people have fled most major cities for the burbs, the tax base and educational investments have generally followed them. You see this over and over again in communities throughout the country.

For example:

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools...

Re:The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore by ghaff on Saturday December 31, 2016 @03:53PM (#13293085)
OK. For Massachusetts 2015, to pick a town and a city that each have one high school and are both expensive property values.

Cambridge (expensive city) $27,569 per pupil

Concord (expensive suburb) $17,517 per pupil

http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx

Rankings

Cambridge Ringe and Latin was 214 out of 340

Concord Carlisle High was 27 out of 340

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3

Not cherry-picked data.

A lot of the difference is that cities, even expensive ones, are cities. A lot more diverse student body. A lot more students with problems at home. More disruption, etc. You can spend more money but the average student in the city school almost certainly has less parental involvement and less of a home environment that's conducive to learning than in the tony suburb.

The linked article (and decades of debate) notwithstanding, it's also hard to really correlate spending per pupil with educational outcomes past a certain point--especially as measured on standardized tests. Poorer cities do spend less. Two Lawrence high schools have the worst test results in Massachusetts. But its spending, $14,475 per pupil, is still only a bit less than Concord.

Re:The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore by ashark on Saturday December 31, 2016 @04:11PM (#13293173)
> Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency.

Definitely does in my city. Teacher pay's also substantially higher in the inner city schools. Most teachers still don't want to work there because they're stuck in a seemingly-inescapable poverty-and-culture-driven "bad homes -> bad students -> burnt-out and bitter faculty" rut, which makes them a discouraging, abusive, and dangerous hell for faculty and students alike.

Source: my wife and probably half my circle of friends are teachers.

[EDIT] in fact, some of the better suburban schools pay worse than the so-so suburban schools, let alone the high-paying inner city ones, because they can. Good teachers will still work there because the environment is nicer and more rewarding (that is, the students are way easier to teach, and the community tends to be supportive)