>
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> The OECD says that U.S. schools do a worse job compensating for poverty
>> than do other countries'. A major reason is the dependence on local funding,
>> which reinforces rather than counters inequities.
>>
>
> That makes perfect sense. And it also suggests an explanation for why our
> high scores are so high (which surprised me): that local funding amplifier
> works in both directions.
>
> Michael
>
>
Without suggesting that there's not very much merit to this argument,
because there is a great deal of merit to it, the situation on this front
isn't as bad as it was before the Supreme Court determined that using local
property taxes to fund education was unconstitutional. Where things get
messed up is - as I understand it - that per student funding is done at the
state level in almost all states but that this applies only to instructional
costs. In terms of buildings, facilities and other infrastructures, whether
or not local millages pass dictates the physical and technical structure and
quality of schools and extracurriculars and this matters no little bit.
At the same time, my sense is that the class status, cultural commitments and intergenerational aspirations of parents likely trumps state funding of instruction and local education infrastructure funding when it comes to student "achievement" in schools. However, from my experience working in the realm of second and third tier public universities, it certainly feels like fewer students than 15 years ago approach college courses in non-instrumental fashion independent of the income strata of the community from which they come. This is not a totalizing statement - there were lots of just-get-me-through-this students before - it just feels like there are a lot more now.
Related to this, there is much greater resistance to actually reading a textbook chapter before a Tuesday class and an article from a professional journal or magazine like the NY Review of Books for Thursday than there was in 1999. I get more and more questions like: "When are you going to put the powerpoints up on Blackboard so I can start to study for the test?" which 95% of the time means: "I assume the chapter itself is unimportant and that everything I need to know is on - and all the relationships I need to understadnd can be gleaned from - the powerpoints." Stunningly, I got this question this weekend in my Intro class and I have only had a powerpoint for one class session so far this semester.
Poverty matters most but so does the educational socialization embedded in the kinds of rote pedagogy, testing mania and jobs skills discourse embedded within and floating around schools, whether primary, secondary or post-secondary.