So this is a thing (Child labor for picking tobacco)

[Not Kuno]

We spend more on education than we do on anything except health care. The issue honestly isn't how much we spend on education, it's how freaking poorly we spend it. We spend more in raw dollars-per-student than any other nation on earth on education, and we spend a higher percentage of our GDP than a pretty vast majority of developed nations. That's not including fundraisers, donations, and other contributions to school outside tax-funded calculations, areas where the US is typically the most generous.

Dollars-per-student is a misleading statistic. In the US special needs students get way more taxpayer money than the gen ed population.

[Blubbartron]

Dollars-per-student is a misleading statistic. In the US special needs students get way more taxpayer money than the gen ed population.

This. Retards and students with behavioral issues that aren't bad enough to be removed from the general population get personal aids that follow them around to classes. It's like having a private teacher for 1 student on top of the real teacher that's working with 20-30 kids. So that one kid is literally costing us ~20x (they're paid less than real teachers, normally) as much as every other kid is.

[Marootsoobutsu]

I'm not disputing that we spend our money poorly; I'm disputing that we aren't willing to spend money, when we very clearly are. Our educational system isn't suffering because we don't spend enough money-- we spend more per student than anyone else, and a larger portion of our GDP than almost anyone else (and once private spending is accounted for, more than anyone else). It's suffering because we don't spend it wisely.

[Niiro]

I suppose it would be more accurate to say we're more willing to waste money trying to solve problems than creating actual solutions.

[Meresgi]

Fun fact: All that $$ you're spending in taxes too doesn't amount to shit when it comes to updating software/courses/ANYTHING. Fucking college I work at still has software running from 1998-2001. I've jerry rigged it to hell so it can even function on windows 7 32bit, but no one wants to invest in upgrading. Some of our buildings are still using old ass Dells from 2008.

[Senji]

While this is true, a good reason why it's stayed that way is the absurd amount it would cost to install and run AC in every public school that would reasonably need them in the Summer that don't currently have them (I'm sure schools in the south and southwest have AC, but speaking for NY, nope, just wall AC units in the faculty/office areas for really early and really late in the school year).

Considering how little we're willing to spend on education to begin with, no one's gonna be pushing for this to happen anytime soon (even though plenty of studies have shown that extended summer vacations knee-cap the educational process massively compared to getting 1 month off in the winter and 1 in the summer).

AC retrofits/upgrades/maintenance are all about that districts budget and their choices of allocation. If your town was poor; yeah your school was probably ghetto. No one's manipulating session schedules because of AC complaints though. Those massive AC units they set on rooftops are actually dirt cheap.

[Quicklet]

Fun fact: All that $$ you're spending in taxes too doesn't amount to shit when it comes to updating software/courses/ANYTHING. Fucking college I work at still has software running from 1998-2001. I've jerry rigged it to hell so it can even function on windows 7 32bit, but no one wants to invest in upgrading. Some of our buildings are still using old ass Dells from 2008.

Can't spend money on actual functional upgrades when they need to install a rock wall in their gym so they can tell prospective students how cool it is to go there.

[hey]

We spend more on education than we do on anything except health care.

That's not even close to true.

[Marootsoobutsu]

That's not even close to true.

NO U!

This game is fun.

[hey]

NO U!

This game is fun.

Military? Social security?

[BaneTheBrawler]

social security was by far the biggest last i saw.

[Marootsoobutsu]

Forgive me; folks I'm with don't tend to think of SS as spending, as redistribution: it's isolated, and covers itself (It's not really part of the "budget" in the way everything else it). Others group it with medicare/medicaid, and I'll admit, I had that in my thought process, even though I know it's not really the same thing.

We spend far more on education than we do on the military-- remember, we have state and local governments, too, which spend a TON on education, and essentially nothing on either social security or the military. The federal government isn't the whole of the nation.

And, as a whole, we spend a lot more on health care than social security. Something like 18% of the GDP is spent on it.

[Roranora]

We spend whatever we charge.

Regardless, a single drone is still worth a few updated OS installs.

[AidenCarby]

About 17% of the budget or something is what's spent on military last I read lol.

[Andalusian girls]

you nerds realize this is the easiest thing on earth to look up



https://www.nationalpriorities.org/b...-101/spending/

education spending is primarily a state by state endeavour but those numbers are likewise very easy to look up, for example, the best of states:

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/agencies.html

to end, we spend as much if not more on education than most nations on earth (all to earn a solid "average" rating from international bodies), a handful beat us in spending as a percentage of GDP but the difference is negligible

http://static2.businessinsider.com/i...by-country.jpg


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3496875.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-ed...d-world-2012-1

oh and also to end according to The World Bank we spend 5.5% of GDP on education, 4.2% on military, 17.9% on healthcare

[Osede]

Fun fact: All that $$ you're spending in taxes too doesn't amount to shit when it comes to updating software/courses/ANYTHING. Fucking college I work at still has software running from 1998-2001. I've jerry rigged it to hell so it can even function on windows 7 32bit, but no one wants to invest in upgrading. Some of our buildings are still using old ass Dells from 2008.

Number of software just now cheap (not like 50 bucks each). Our research center just try to buy one or two set of software, instead, the company just want us to buy at least 20 set, which cost at least 200k per year. The yearly license is the thing killing the academia seldom upgrade the software infrastructure.

Just imagine if solid works all those shit had to renew every year, it's $$$$$$

[Meresgi]

Number of software just now cheap (not like 50 bucks each). Our research center just try to buy one or two set of software, instead, the company just want us to buy at least 20 set, which cost at least 200k per year. The yearly license is the thing killing the academia seldom upgrade the software infrastructure.

Just imagine if solid works all those shit had to renew every year, it's $$$$$$

Which is why I push for open source shit for a lot of things, and no one wants to because it's too "hard". Licensing is terrible nowadays and you get jack fucking shit in terms of customer support. Why are we paying 10-100k/year for shitty software that when it breaks WE have to fix it because your tech support has no idea wtf is going on, because the 5 guys who wrote this software (no joke, we have programs written by 2-3 people in a garage at some point) all left the company 5 years ago.