Textbooks are a racket and not just for college students.
Most of the money spent on education involves grifts for stuff like that, not for actual important shit like schools or teachers.
PSA, whenever someone asks you to buy something for a fundraiser just donate instead. Especially if you don’t want what they’re selling. They’ll get 100% of that instead of like… I honestly don’t even know, but it can’t be more than 25%.
30-50% if its an actual physical item is pretty normal. If it’s something like a discount card or coupon book, profit approaches 90%.
girlscout cookies?
What about them?
Dry, stale, over priced.
Wouldn’t bother.
Just donate the money directly to that Girl Scout group.
why would I support the people? I just want the cookies and to see the struggle of delivery.
Comparing things like this between countries is not straightforward. For example, Australia spends $14.1k per student while New Zealand spends $8.6k. That’s about 5.2% of GDP for both countries. From those numbers, would we conclude that Australia is overpaying, or New Zealand is underpaying, or that the two countries are comparable?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-spending-by-country
Damn, Norway being only 4% of GDP is shocking, because they also pay their teachers well and have great education in general.
I think that goes to my point about simple comparisons being difficult. Norway has a high GDP relative to its size, so 4% might be more than enough for their situation. You also have to account for things like the labor cost of teachers, which varies by country.
Also the sort of things the schools spend money on. I don’t know from experience, but I think US schools pay for police officers to be at the school. That seems crazy to me, and expensive.
It encourages then to develop that grindset early.
Not American, and I have no factual answer but I assume it’s because the people at the top just take all the money and leave the schools to fend for themselves. Typical corporate nonsense.
Public schools are run by the local government, so “corporate nonsense” doesn’t really make sense. They aren’t corporations.
Looking at the global median isn’t a good comparison, for starters. Many of those school systems aren’t comparable.
That said, there’s not likely to be one reason. I could guess at them, but I’d rather not since some will inevitably be wrong.
Because the money goes to do-nothing administrators’ salaries, as well as urgent purchases as a result of bad or zero planning
Have to teach kids to beg for the bare essentials early in life. That way they’ll never know it could be different.
Not the only reason, but the cost of living is higher in the U.S. than most other locales on the planet.
That was my first reaction. I didn’t find the global average spending number reported by the OP, but according to this page, the 2019 average spending of $15,500 per student (38% higher than OECD average) did consider purchasing power.
Others may have different experiences, but AFAIK schools tend to be funded by the property taxes in their district. Combined with rampant, unchecked, failed desegreation, and you have some schools that are swimming in cash while everyone else begs to close that gap.
Because the public school funding comes from public taxpayer money. This means the school does not get to choose how to spend it since the money belongs to the people. The people have voted and greenlit several pre-approved items for schools to spend money on, but anything outside of that needs to be approved by a vote.
Getting people to vote on this item is a Heraclean effort to say the least. Education budget often is the least immediately impactful thing on the ballot, if it makes it that far. Especially in states with strong traditional religious areas. For example, Puritans don’t believe that sports are something that kids should take seriously cuz it’s a game (literally something along the lines of: Games can be pleasurable, seeking pleasure is sin you should only seek God, therefore games are sinful). They don’t want their taxes going towards such sinful programs so they will always vote against it. This perspective is rooted in zealous obedience and is not something other people are willing to fight against.
TL;Dr It’s easier for schools to just get private funding themselves and sidestep the public budget restrictions, than it is to get a majority in the voting pool to approve the vote and implement new school budget item.
Well I’d reckon that that 15k is an average. Rich kid schools don’t need fundraising but poor districts do. Oh yeah and the funding for schools comes from local districts so if you live in a rich neighborhood your school is way more funded than if you live in the poor areas, which is why people are obsessed with that info if they have kids and want to move.
Also not all departments get the same funding. The football team gets a lot of the budget but the arts get scraps at best. So even if you’re in an ok school, because of how they spend the money, specific classes might need help.
Why the football team? The games bring in money, people donate because of the local team, and the odd lottery that one of those kids becomes a professional and might help out in the future.
without digging into the numbers, i can pretty confidently say that schools are more than 30% more expensive than the global median in the US. staffing costs especially.
How is that 15k statistic calculated? Sounds questionable. Do you have a source? Does that include social spending like the dedication of parents time and personal expenses such as in South Korea? Is that government spending? Are fundraisers only a USA thing?
Regardless of how exactly the stat is calculated, I am sure it is massively inflated by college football budgets
All you have to do is look at how much of the collected money actually guess to the school then ask what happens to the rest. That’s why.
