alt Hacker NewsWell if only we had such thoughtful minds in the education space. How did no one ever think of "why don't we just give up on the children"?
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It's just that politics outweighs systems thinking.
Selling a narrative that money can fix, getting funds, and then allocating funds is comically easy and less risky than trying to fix something broken. You're capturing sentiment into political momentum, when you're the one who allocates money you are very, very popular and interesting and can make many things happen.
You can do all of this and move on independently of any results in the problem statements that may or may not have been written to begin with.
Contrast that with telling people hard truths like deified educators aren't effectual, or that per-capita pupil spending doesn't correlate with outcomes, or how parents and home culture are stronger effects than whether you offer rich IEPs or adopted Common Core - you can be tarred and feathered for rocking the boat before you get to make any change.
It's not that anyone thinks we should give up on the children, it's that we should probably give up on direct democracy in some areas, and at best, these spending splurges are incompetence and at worst, outright wealth transfers to the PMC and NGOs or fraud.
Success of student should be evaluated as that above an individual baseline. The false assumption that every student is equally capable is insane. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Every time funding is increased but the scores never rise.
Because they're spending all their mental cycles thinking "how can I extract as much money from the system as possible". Like only asking students to attend when they'll be counted for funds allocation.
Not that I agree with GP, but the problem is that no one (in positions of power in the educational system) is thinking of the children (in SFW ways, given the recent release of the Epstein files)
you’re measuring the wrong thing. Spending more on education if a child’s home life is garbage is a waste of time. That’s controversial because it doesn’t sound nice, but it’s a fact. The real problem is not at school and school can only help so much.
At a broad policy level, government should focus its effort in other areas of basic NEEDS first. Stable jobs for parents, housing and food needs met, etc. Being a successful student when your families basic needs are not met is an uphill battle.