this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
248 points (95.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35729 readers
978 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've also seen US teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock classrooms.

I spent a lot of time in European schools and I've never heard of teachers having to stock their own classrooms or fundraise for things like playgrounds, etc.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Many people here are talking about under-funding of education in the US. If you look at expenditure per student vs GDP per capita, the US is actually doing fairly well when compared to the rest of the world. Our problems aren't funding related (though I wouldn't argue against more funding). Our problems are allocation and priority related.

See here for data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country

[–] PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do construction. My company is building a new $40,000,000 school in a town with a population of 143.

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wow, how many students are they expecting? I assume they'll be pulling from a lot of the surrounding area.

[–] PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip 6 points 8 months ago

That I really don't know online it says 97 kids in k-12. It's in a very rural area and the second phase of construction not in the original bid for the school is housing so when they hire more teachers they have a place to live.

While I don't think it's bad they are getting a new school but going with the op it is kind of crazy when they can do that but my kids teachers ask us to supply the classroom with all kinds of stuff.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I wonder if there are some holes in their methodology with regards to how people are paid in the US vs Europe. Like are they factoring in government benefits of teachers and staff that aren’t part of work like they are in the US. Salary and Benefits is a huge part of the cost, as well as land and construction costs.

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

That's true. They may not be factoring in government benefits. Things like universal health care.

[–] Anamnesis@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, healthcare and other benefits aren't likely to account for the discrepancy, as pretty much all teachers get benefits (with the exception of adjuncts at the university level, who are absolutely fucked).

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

My understanding is salaries are higher in the US in part because of the lack of universal healthcare, and other things that end up coming out of people’s pockets when compared to Europe. I did a little digging on the site, and it does look like salary and benefits are up to 80% of the cost.

[–] rsuri@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I suspect it has more to do with the stark wealth differences in the US which are vastly higher than in Europe, especially because the above includes both public and private education. The US may spend a lot on the mean student, but not much on the median student.

I went to a really well-funded public school, and a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they're basically paying for education twice. Rich American parents spend tons of money on their kids' education. It would be interesting to see a map of spending per student and see how it is in poor areas.

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they're basically paying for education twice

Not any more thanks to the Republican pushed school voucher system!

I think your last sentence touched on the real problem. Schools are funded based on local property taxes. So if you're in a poor area your schools are poor. It's like Jim Crow and segregaron but legal

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

The problem is multiplied by the fact that the people who are supposed to figure out how to be efficient with the money are either elected or paid way below market rate. So either way, they don't have the skills for it.