> And I think that the funding story is flatly untrue. Because the dominant source of public education funding is from local taxes, there are vast differences in the per-student level of funding across the country.

This is patently false. Local governments provide 45% of K-12 educational spending. State governments spend 47% and the federal government spends 8%: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/styles/optimized_d.... State and federal funding go overwhelmingly to erasing the disparities in local funding.

Look at the funding numbers in your own state. Here is mine: https://i2.wp.com/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/wp-content/up.... The funding differences are based on cost of living, not local income. My solidly middle/upper middle class county has spending near the bottom because it’s pretty rural. Baltimore which is very poor has among the highest. Montgomery and Prince George’s, which are opposite sides of the income spectrum, get almost the same amount of funding. You can also see in that chart how differences in local funding are more than compensated for by differences in state funding.

> State and federal funding go overwhelmingly to erasing the disparities in local funding.

And it isn't enough. Not even close.

Boulder Valley: 13.8k/student. Pueblo: 10.5k/ea. Fort Morgan: 9.5k/student. Those are sufficiently widely varying that looking at "average spending" paints an inaccurate picture.

Durham public schools: 10.5k/ea. Chapel-Hill/Carrboro: 15k/ea.

https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_...

Range of total spending per student spreads by over a factor of 4x.

First, you look at the whole country, there is in fact not a difference in most states: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...

Second, I’m not sure what your Colorado example is supposed to prove. Boulder is a much more expensive city than Pueblo. Land for schools is cheaper, salaries are lower, etc. Those costs seem roughly comparable accounting for local costs.

Third, comparing spending across states is deeply misleading. The cost of schooling in Idaho (which makes up several of the lowest spending school districts in your link) bears little relation to the cost of schooling in New York (which makes up several of the highest spending school districts in your link). The irony of your example is that Idaho spends about 1/3 of what New York spends per student, and Idaho students outperform New York students: https://www.sde.idaho.gov/assessment/naep/files/general/naep...

Fourth, even the low spending school districts in your examples spend more than European countries: https://www.statista.com/statistics/381745/education-expendi.... School spending in London is about $7,402 per student. That’s substantially less than Pueblo or Durham, and only a bit more than the state average for Idaho ($7,100). I guarantee you that money goes a hell of a lot further in Durham or Boise than London!

I just wanted to say thanks for the insightful comment. I wasn't aware that this data had been compiled in such a clear and concise manner!

That said, what do you think drives the disparity in outcomes between different US districts and schools, if the funding roughly tracks with cost of living? Similarly, why are schools in European countries so much more efficient in terms of educational costs?

One thought on the first question that comes to my mind is that students who are impoverished or have english as a second language will not have comparable outcomes, even if their school districts have comparable funding.

I wonder if one aspect of the second question is the handling of special education for disabled students. Do European countries educate these students in a different manner from the US. Is the funding taken into account when we look at per student costs?

And yet, we still can't afford 5 full days per week of school. 60% of all districts in our state only have funding for 4 days per week. Many of the remainder are on 4.5 days/week.

> Third, comparing spending across states is deeply misleading.

This is why you cannot use averages to talk about school funding relative to the rest of the OECD. That's my point. You asked for statistics in my state. I gave them, in my most recent two states of residence.

Why do you think that the individual school districts have so much of a problem providing and equivalent educations when compared to other individual school districts that have much better outcomes with less funds, even controlling for cost of living?

I wonder if it has to do with the level of services expected and provided between locations, states, and counties.

For example, I know that special needs students, which can be notoriously expensive to educate.

Here's another data point, having looked at a few different US district budgets: Employee benefits are about 1/4 of the staffing budget. Those benefits include things like health care and pension that are part of national coverage in the rest of the OECD, but come out of the "education" budget in the US.

No. Nearly all OECD countries pay for health and pension insurance through payroll taxes. So a school in France would pay employer-side payroll taxes for a teacher, which would show up as education spending. And the teacher would pay the employee-side contribution from her salary, which itself would show up as education spending. (That is to say, “national coverage” in most European countries doesn’t work how Americans think it works, which seems to be that health benefits for middle class people are paid for through income taxes on rich people. If it did work like that, you’d be right, but pretty much only Denmark does that. See: http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-france.pdf. Look at France. About 25% of the total cost of an employee to an employer, such as a school, is employer-side social security taxes—the OECD’s term for payroll taxes for health and pension benefits.)

Moreover, many countries exempt teachers from the national pension scheme, just like the US. The UK, which I used as an example above, has a teacher pension system

I was with you up until here. Are you claiming that France does not have progressive income tax rates? This is certainly not the case. France has both a higher average tax wedge, as well as proportionally higher tx for high incomes.

French income tax maxes out at 45% on income above €157,807, while US federal income tax maxes out at 37% above $518,401

I spent some time digging into the London story. Here's some facts:

Spending levels are much higher than parent reported. [1] for one school chosen at random shows that their budget was almost 8000 GBP/pupil - over 30% higher than cited. Furthermore, 82% was staffing. A mere 3% is allocated to facilities.

In my local school district[2], salaries for all staff add up to a little less than 60% of the budget. Facilities (21.6%) and debt service (7.6%) are a far greater fraction of our costs.

In short, the "education is cheaper in London" story is a lie. Many of their costs are payed for by a different color of money entirely, and simply doesn't show up on the education budget.

[1] https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/school...

[2] https://www.adams12.org/financial-services/documents/fiscal-...

The school you picked “at random” is a community academy, which is a special kind of charter school outside the regular school system, which may also receive outside funding. So that doesn’t contradict the numbers I posted, which are for regular public schools in London. Here is another chart that’s consistent with my numbers: https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/11/school-funding-alloc...

You hear that rhetoric often. However the truth is different. If both the democrats and Republicans propose increasing spending, but one increases less than the other, the one that increases less is said to cut spending. I've seen cases where the larger spending passes and they take credit for it the next year even though the states budget didn't balance (the state has a balanced budget requirement) and so what was actually spend was less than what the spending cut party proposed. (we don't know what would happen if the other party had won, since they claim they would have delivered by spending less elsewhere)

>Because the dominant source of public education funding is from local taxes, there are vast differences in the per-student level of funding across the country.

This is what I said as well. There is also vast difference in per-student spending within blue states and blue counties. This is evidence that the problem crosses party lines.