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Re:Less than half of California students read or do math at ... by nhchris on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @01:31PM (#34986376)
This is a common but false claim. Property tax funding is supplemented by state and federal taxes to compensate disparities:

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-di...

on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively [total per-pupil funding is around $14k, so the differences are negligible] - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...

And the US spends more than average per pupil - more than Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Japan: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

Re:Less than half of California students read or do math at ... by jeffbee on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @01:41PM (#34986520)
The state does not "compensate" for the fact that wealthy city school districts simply fund their schools under the table with massive PTA budgets, and there is not a lot the state can do about that in the short term without significant tax reform.

Three adjacent school districts, in descending order of household income and grade-level performance: Piedmont (90% at-grade-level), Berkeley (67%), Oakland (33%).

Re:Less than half of California students read or do math at ... by nhchris on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @02:10PM (#34986846)
Three randomly chosen districts out of tens of thousands prove little. Looking at wider statistics instead of small anecdote, we see that in addition to lagging behind countries the US outspends on education, greatly increased spending has had no benefits even within its borders:

Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled. Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has stagnated according to the Department of Education’s own long term National Assessment of Educational Progress [I encourage you to visit the website for the illuminating graph of inflation adjusted per-pupil spending and test scores vs. time] - https://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/education-spending-doub...