New York City spends close to $30k per public school student. They should be able to afford anything with this kind of spending.

I'm inclined to believe this. I was in a discussion about this yesterday with friends and a clear statistic would have helped. But the chart you've got there --- I know it's not the fulcrum of your whole argument, I'm not sniping --- doesn't really make the case you make in your comment. It says that we spend 0.1% more than the OECD average on primary/secondary schools, but are boosted in the overall rankings by spending way more than any other country on tertiary schools (unsurprising).

I usually take the G7 as the benchmark—what oil emirates like Norway or banking havens like Switzerland spend aren’t a relevant comparison to a big diversified economy like the US. We spend a bigger percentage of our economy on K-12 than all but one other G7 country. And since our GDP per capita is so high, that share of GDP represents 20%+ more purchasing power than other G7 countries. That should be more than enough. We need to stop acting like money is the problem in education.

Isn't money spent on education mostly teachers' salaries? So high GDP per capita just makes education more expensive, not less expensive. If education spending was mostly electronics, then higher GDP per capita would have been good for education.

My wife is a teacher. We spend our own money every year.

Maybe you should stop. Let the system fail enough such that the pain that you're preventing will start to affect the people who can actually fix things. If you can't fix it, let the wheel squeak. You're not the parent or savior of those children, so don't allow your high levels of empathy and life choices to be exploited by bureacrats. They know exactly which buttons to push and how to manipulate the type of people teachers are.

Stop playing the game where you spend money to cover up incompetence or corruption. Don't be a reliable patsy. Some problems only get better if you force the ones responsible to fix it.

Use a classroom to audit their own supplies and needs, and see where money intended for education actually goes. The information should ask be public.

The problem is that people who can actually fix things generally send their kids to private schools.

Then solve that problem, and stop subsidizing incompetence and corruption.

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them?

American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing.

These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their times tables.

Many teachers spend their money essentially replacing the role of 1) parents and 2) administrators.

I know a lot of teachers spending money on hygiene products:tampons, deodorant ect, because it is distracting if students are bleeding at their desks and smell like garbage.

2) they also spend money on basic supplies, pens pencils, as well as heaters and coolers for the room because the administration blew the funds on some bs like a marble facade for the school

Although I sympathize with the student's issues, it is not taxpayer's fault that these issues occur.

For (1) the government already gives housing assistance, food stamps and a bunch of other welfare programs, so the parents can easily afford basic hygiene products and they should be paying for it, not the school.

For (2) it is the administration's malice or incompetence that is burning away the money. We shouldn't increase the budget even more, we should hold the administration and the parents accountable.

I don't disagree, but this is the situation teachers are in. The parents should be buying the hygiene products, but aren't so teachers are trying to fill the gaps. It is a inefficient solution to a problem that should be addressed by someone else, but they are the ones that have to deal with it in order to do their regular job.

The comment you are replying to didn't even touch on "what are the appropriate ages to learn multiplication".

That level of discussion is really astonishingly low. You respond to something the parent comment didn't even touch on, and half of your comment is offenses to the parent commenter.

Yes it did. He thinks they make too much arts and crafts and they should do more times tables.

Maybe he should study child psychology and become a teacher. (As if this stuff isn't studied extensively)

You missed this "Teachers generally spend their own money on the basics. Pencils, pens, paper, deodorant, tampons, etc."

Sure schools are well funded in comparison to others. Doesn't mean most teachers aren't routinely spending their own money on supplies. The “Just. Stop.” attitude from anyone who hasn't spent time in the US public school system, and just looks at the numbers doesn't address this. The US is rapidly losing experienced teachers, something which has only accelerated in the last two years.

https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-schools-struggle-to-hire...