Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 9847320" data-attributes="member: 19675">[SPOILER="Context"]I’m an army brat who has been to public schools in 5 states and 2 countries, and I have a small collection of degrees.  My grandmothers taught 1st & 2nd grade; my maternal grandfather taught in college; my paternal grandfather taught HS & college and was also a principal.  Mom taught music in HS.[/SPOILER]Keeping the politics to a minimum, here’s some key factors I’ve seen in the different levels of the American education system:1) Public schools’ curriculums and funding are controlled at the state and local levels, and the funding side is often driven by property values.  For a long time, that meant schools in poorer communities were extremely underfunded and had outdated supplies and decaying infrastructure.  (No joke, I attended one school with history books that ended with speculation about if & when men would reach the moon- an event that happened 2 years after my birth.)  Some states are only a few decades into the process of making school funding more equalized.The localized school boards have also resulted in an extremely politicized book & curriculum approval process.  It’s a constant battle in some regions to teach actual science and history.2) Money, money, money: the universities are in a global competition for it, in all of its forms.  Colleges & Universities that get too visibly entangled in American culture wars lose international students, investments from foreign & domestic businesses & governments, and so forth.  And the feedback loop between those income streams and the quality of recruits & graduates- and the statewide economies- is very strong.3) our public schools are structured to maintain the status quo.  Our institutions of higher learning are about upward mobility.</blockquote>

Verification