First there isn't necessarily much difference between the government or cronies seizing the sources of wealth eg oil and spending it before it touches citizens hands and seizing a portion thereof after it comes into citizens hands. In either case it siphoning off a percentage of the productivity of the nation and spending it hopefully for the common good. Even passing regulations are laws can be seen as tilting the field in favor of one or the other. Effectively taking the money for example of the power plant operator and making them buy equipment they don't want to sanitize the air the rest of us have to breath.
The tyranny you are decrying is a function of every functional nation in history. Economics it turns out is a poor tool by itself to manage the public good because consumer attention is finite, information imperfect, and circumstances complex. How precisely do you vote with your dollars now to keep the power plant operators from collectively poisoning you.
Well you vote for people who promise to write regulations with the help of scientists to avoid poisoning the planet and blackening your lungs because this solution has proved at least semi functional.
Carefully ignoring their own education, their desire to live in a functional society, their care and keeping when they get old etc.
I plan to go child-free, but I still vote for tax increases to fund my local schools, because I care about children in general, not just the ones related to me.
There is an aversion to investing in society at large because it benefits the poor and black. Even if that investment pays off double, triple, sextuple times what is put in[1]. People value white supremacy higher than even their own safety net[2].
1. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/12/504867570/how-inv...
2. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/americans-welfare-perce...
The government here is structured to make public schooling answerable to local concerns and funded by local taxes. It's the barest minimum government you can apply.
Private schooling only amplifies the issues with this system. It has all the same problems, along with not needing to be transparent or accountable to the public.
I think part of this stems from how much power the states have, to be honest. There's no overarching system of, say, education that can really be used to hold States accountable for what they teach and appropriation of funds and such. Sure, they're bound by some regulations if they accept federal funding, but it's nowhere near enough. They can choose willy-nilly to just change it up, by stopping the federal funding...which is often a decision made on politics rather than what's good for the kids.
Not to mention that American secondary schools are going through an identity crisis, as I see it.
The local boards often do not have the power to:
(1) Raise revenue that would fund much independently of outside funding,
(2) Freely control how much of funding they do have is spent, because the outside funding sources or superior (e.g., state) law independent of funding sets narrow parameters for many of their decisions.
Districts can raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars via bonds (requires voter approval but usually passes). They can also pass parcel taxes, which aren't subject to Prop 13 although they can be regressive. Most of their money does still come from the state, but IMO that's not a bad thing, since keeping it more local raises issues with income inequality.
There's very few limits on how they spend their money. I think the only caveat is that districts get extra amounts of ADA money based on the attendance of certain categories of students (e.g. ones that are still learning English). They're supposed to spend that money on relevant programs, and the county has to certify that the spending on those programs lines up with the amount of extra money that is being received.
Couldn't a state, or a district in a state, opt out of Federal funding and then be free from those Federal programs and policies?
Yes, they would lose 10% of funding, but if Federal policies are the reason our schools spend way more per student with worse results than other OECD countries, then getting out from those policies should let them massively improve even with the reduced budget.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...
You get functional systems through competition, having many choices so that even if one (or 90%) of them are crap, you can go to the one which isn't. There is by definition no competition at any level of government, which is why so many government-managed services are crap. There is also little competition with most big businesses, which is why big businesses are crap. There is plenty of competition among small businesses, which is why you can go to most walkable downtowns and pick a restaurant and it'll be pretty good, or visit most AirBnB hosts and have a decent stay, or look for a favorite YouTube channel and find one that's interesting.
The public/private spending tables are not so useful because they measure based on GDP, which leads to bizarre results like South Africa and Costa Rica being top of the world in education, but you can convert it into usable data. For instance we see that we spend 3.2% of our GDP publicly on all education outside of university, and we spend 0.31% of it privately. So we can combine those two to tell us that 3.2 / (3.2 + 0.31) = 91% of all spending on education outside of university is publicly funded. Since we spend $12,424 per student per year on this education group, we can then say that we publicly spend $11,327 of public funds per student per year. Now going back to our education table we can see that this means we are ranked 8th in the world by spending even if we only compare out public spending to every other country's public+private spending.
The point of this is that we spend alot on education. Yet as you yourself have said, we have quite an awful education system. By contrast you'll find many countries spending a tiny fraction of what we do, even parity adjusted, and excelling. For instance here are the PISA results, which provide a means of comparing educational performance between nations. [2] We definitely have a major problem with education, but I think there is no evidence that more money is anything like a solution.
If you genuinely care about children in general, then I think a far more productive idea would be to do something like join the Big Brothers and Big Sister's Program from United Way, and get to play a positive role in the life of disadvantaged youth. That program works, is fun, and you'll spend way less than you would just asking the government to take more money from you and others, and you can actually make a very positive change in somebody's life.
[1] - https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm
[2] - https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-ma...
1) It's so inconsistent across states. Like, some required a masters to teach, some don't. Some require you to have Algebra 2 to graduate, some don't. etc. etc.
2) Our schools are going through an identity crisis, are are trying to be everything to everyone. The schools are trying to prep students for college, while also trying to make them career ready. We haven't struck a balance, and instead are trying to do both for all students, instead of setting one of them on a vocational track. Yes, some schools are good at that, but then those vocational students still often have the same graduation requirements as those who are planning on going to college; or they only have slightly lowered ones (at the school I teach at, the difference is chemistry and 2 years of a foreign language).
It's an issue that can only be resolved, in my opinion, by basically creating two types of schools, and separating the students at, say, age 15 or 16. And, of course, allowing them to change if they show the desire (and ability) to later.
'No Man is an Island' - John Donne
It seems to me that believing in democracy also requires in believing in democratic outcomes even when they are not your own personal preferences or opinions.
Not everyone wants to be forced to buy more things from the government.