You're -blam!-ing insane if you think schools should be funded primarily based on the wealth of the surrounding area or how strong the smell of the old money is.

Heres a reformation that should work. Ask a kid what he wants to be when he grows up. Teach them only what they need to know, to accomplish that goal and cut out the fat... unless they want the extra unnecessary education for that path. Ie. History class is a huge waste of time unless you want to work in politics, etc. 99% of people don't use math above a 6th grade level throughout their entire lifetime. No need to. Someone has to be paid to shove that unneccesary education onto students.

Another thing that needs to go is he way how in the US, a school can have it's funding pulled if the students are not performing well enough. That's completely backwards from how it should be.

Name one thing the Feds run well and efficiently. - Der

The more control a school system has at the local level, the more customizable it can be to fit the needs of the student body.

I am skeptical of centralized control, because I believe programs are most effective and accountable to the people they affect when they are closer to those people. I have no real knowledge of how education funding works, and here is what makes sense to me. -Federal standards. A loose set of standards ensures that students across the nation meet minimum requirements. Any federal funding should be in the form of a block grant, rather than open-ended matching. -State oversight. The state should enforce the standards. It should also have the flexibility to experiment with its own programs, and provide assistance to low-income areas. -Local control. Schools are run and funded by their communities, and the administration are easily accessible to parents and teachers. I honestly think the problem is more about how we view education as a society.

I am 100% opposed to giving educational power to non-local government. Students who don't value education aren't going to automatically become motivated once their districts are more funded. Kids who live lives of crime won't just start studying because their teachers give them new equipment. The motivation to elevate yourself above a life of poverty through education is intrinsic. Any kid that goes from a chump to a scholar because they have more material is either an outlier or an entitled prick. Don't ask me or anyone else to pour money into a school system whose students care more about swag than their future.

Here is the problem: A system like this promotes teaching for a test rather than real-life situations.

Like Dutchy, I support federal education standards. I also support state-run funding, rather than local, but it needs to be done right. Being a former teacher who lives in California, I feel like I need to chime in here. In most, if not all states, public schools are funded by property taxes. In the late 70s, CA passed legislation [Proposition 13] that did two things: 1) Property taxes would be collected by Sacramento and funding for education would be handled by the state rather than local government 2) Property taxes would never increase I don't specifically have much of a problem with Part 1. If the revenue from property taxes on multi-million dollar homes will now be distributed to all public schools, instead of just the ones local to those wealthy areas, everybody wins. However, making it impossible to ever raise property taxes really fuc­ked us. Now, some of you may not know about the diversity of California's residents. Because of the sheer size of California, there's some pretty rural areas and a good number of low income and poor people. On the flip side, there's also outrageous millionaires with their mansions and garages full of Ferraris. In combination with these expansive homes, there was a huge real estate boom throughout most of SoCal in the 90's. For example, my parents bought their 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3 car garage house for $250k in 1992. It is now worth over $1m. As a result of Prop 13, we couldn't take much advantage of this housing boom in order to better fund the schools. Instead of expanding their education and raising the quality, a great many CA schools have been cutting courses and programs. In the school district I taught in, which was in a pretty affluent area, the music, art, and science programs were funded entirely through a non-profit organization created specifically to raise money for the schools, instead of being funded by local property taxes which would have more than covered our bases.

If it works, I'm all for it. I was home schooled, and my kids are going to be privately educated. It's the only way to get a decent education in poor areas.

Sounds like how it is in Canada, so sure. Also, allow religious schools to be funded by the government, like in Canada.

Dutchy supports federal education standards.

The only thing that can help the education system is an entire overhaul of it. As Osho said, many types of relationships in our lives have changed and diminished, but the relationship between a master and a disciple has entirely vanished. The most important part of schools really is the teacher, and teaching has become a rudimentary profession; the majority of teachers are in it simply to make money and have a decent life, not because they genuinely grasp what they are teaching and wish to enlighten others. The relationship between student and teacher should also change, in Plato's Academy for instance emphasis was put into discussion of ideas between pupils and teacher.

Maybe we should not keep babying kids and letting them do whatever they want. People should not be allowed into high school unless they take a test, and pass it with like an 80%. They need to be severely punish for actual shit, instead of going soft on the big shit till they start cracking down on people who barely do anything. Maybe parents should stop getting mad at the teachers when the child acts like an idiot. And we need a standardized curriculum throughout the U.S.