However the schools my boys go to costs $2100 a year vs. public in this area of $8,000 per student and I bet you can't guess which turns out better students
Tell you a little story...
I went to public schools in a little farming burb - population nine hundred ninety-two (1990 Census). Our high school had a 1950's era chemistry lab (and a teacher to match), a computer lab containing 10 donated 286 Leading Edge computers with monochrome monitors, no biology lab, no physics lab, no computers in the classrooms outside of our computer lab, no air conditioning, not the newest of books or in the best of condition, etc. The 'greater area' encompassed two additional townships whose schools merged with this little farming burb and the combined population was approximately 8,500 (IIRC).
Before the school districts merged, I attended school in trailers K through 2nd grade. The trailers were added due to a population 'boom'. lol! Each trailer held an entire grade - approximately 20 students - K through 2nd. These were early 70s make mobile trailers with no air conditioning and only a space heater - hot as hell in the summer and drafty in the winter. We did ABCs and 123s with winter coats on during extremely cold mornings.
Our school system was at times so budget strained, PARENTS and TEACHERS had to chip-in to buy badly needed school supplies. There were years we had to pay upwards of $300 to play sports in order to put fuel in the busses and purchase needed sports equipment.
I was some what lazy, academically. I was happy being only 'average', like my friends. As it turns out, 'average' in my school was still well above the national average. I scored 25 on the ACT when the national average was 20. My standardized aptitude tests (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) were always above the state average.
A few years after graduating, I watched a half-hour news report about the state of public schools in Flint, Michigan, which is only about 25 minutes from where I grew up. A news crew went into one of Flint's 'impoverished and disadvantaged' public schools to show the 'terrible conditions' in which the downtrodden students were forced to learn.
KISS MY ASS AND CALL ME WHITEY! If that was a 'disadvantaged' school, then we attended school in third f-cking world conditions by comparison. 'Disadvantaged' compared to what? A $20,000/year elite private academy? F-CK ME!
There were some legitimate gripes. The fire control systems were in poor condition, the buildings were decaying, the boilers didn't work some times. What does that have to do with learning? NOT A THING!
Their biology labs were 10 years out-dated. BOO F-CKING HOO! We didn't have a biology lab. Their books were five years old. BOO HOO! I remember using books that had "Class of 1969" etched into the inside cover - in 1983! And those movies! We had the old projectors and film. The productions were all from the 1950s and 1960s. I think the school bought a VCR in like 1985.
But we were just a bunch of white kids, nobody gave a damned about us. In fact, we didn't know we were 'disadvantaged' and never had that 'stigma' hanging over our heads. We didn't have the professional 'uplifters' and 'crusaders' come in to our school to inform us how 'disadvantaged' we were compared with some other kids somewhere else, fostering if not deliberately encouraging resentment, bitterness, and class envy, because quite frankly, there was no money or 'prestige' in promoting the 'plight' of white kids. You know it and I know it.
And because we didn't have some social uplifter or crusader always at our elbow incessantly reminding us that we were 'disadvantaged', we weren't. Not in our minds, we weren't, which is precisely where this kind of stigma can have the greatest affect. Legions of young inner-city youths are sent - deliberately - into 'the world' believing they are 'owed' something because they were some how 'slighted' or 'cheated'. CRAP!
There were kids failing in our school, but it wasn't due to any short-comings of our school. There were also kids excelling academically in math, physics, chemistry, etc. What's the difference? New books? New desks? New ceiling tiles? A computer? The failing kids must not have had qualified teachers? Bullsh-t. The difference was THE HOME.
When all this federal education money can figure out how to make fathers support their children, or stop being alcoholics, or stop being abusive, or can convince PARENTS to prioritize education and give PARENTS the tools to promote an interest in learning at an early age, then you'll see a positive association between money spent and test scores.
As long as we have these failing communities with high rates of single parent households, teen pregnancy, alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment, no parental support, among other stability and support issues within
the home and community as a whole, a new damned computer, or textbook, more teachers and smaller class sizes, isn't going to mean sh-t.
Teachers aren't surrogates for supportive parents and stable homes, they are merely compliments to them. There are exceptions, but then they are the exceptions.
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