‘Never seen it this bad’: America faces catastrophic teacher shortage

[weaver2]

Are you REALLY trying to compare Finland and the US? Its truly remarkable when leftists point to countries like Finland as models to aspire to. Finlands total population is less than the total population of Colorado.

Educations in the US is not federally but state controlled. Each state, some being larger some smaller than Finland, is free to do exactly as Finland has done with their educational system. Any US state can make teacher training more comprehensive and demanding, require a masters degree, pay more, start respecting education by asking politicians and public figures to stop calling teachers smug, know-it-all liberal- commie Demorat brainwashing children.

Finland is virtually all white.

LOL so our racism explains why we can't have good education? You do understand that we don't actually have to be racist.

Finland has virtually NONE of the same economic structures the US has. Finland doesnt deal with poverty stricken communities in their major cities like we do in our rat party controlled cities.

That's right they don't have the same economic structures that keep people poor in the US. They don't deal with poverty stricken communities because they have programs, services and financial laws that keep people out of poverty.

Most finnish families only have 1 child...there are less than a million children in the entire country 14 and under.

Because their government funds honest sex education in schools instead of funding abstinence only. They support access to women's effective contraceptives and abortion is a medical issue not a political vehicle to elect conservative law makers.

The US faces the problem of more illegal immigrants in a 2 year span than the total population of Finland.

Finland actually takes in .1% more immigrants than we do. Their immigrant population is is mostly Somali and Iraqi. They do have a problem at their border. Finland was once part of Russia and they would like to take it back now.

750,000 immigrants wanting to come in and become citizens is not the same problem as having Russia line up war machinery on your border.

Don't kid yourself into thinking that other countries have better education, less poverty, more stable job structures and better health care because it is easier for them to do these things. First you have to really want those things and be ready to support them, as do the Finns, and the Germans, and the Scandinavians, and the Lats and the Lithuanians and the French and the Swiss and the Singaporians and so on.

Americans just don't want to pay for education or health care or insurance for everyone, reduce poverty, curb racism, stop the nonsense over abortion or make corporations less rapacious.

 

[Mustachio]

Education is what students make of it. I don’t know what a “nom-union” is.

So what is the point of the teachers I know purchasing their own classroom supplies? Ask any teacher, they all do it now. Because they have no other choice. Education is what students make of the material we provide for them with the assistance we provide for them. If education was just what students made of it, you would surely support online-only education right? Most cost effective, no actual teachers, maybe $50 per grade and a $10 fee for a "my child does his school" shirt

 

[NOVA66]

You should by all means not carry one.

I always carry a gun.

 

[Mustachio]

Educations in the US is not federally but state controlled. Each state, some being larger some smaller than Finland, is free to do exactly as Finland has done with their educational system. Any US state can make teacher training more comprehensive and demanding, require a masters degree, pay more, start respecting education by asking politicians and public figures to stop calling teachers smug, know-it-all liberal- commie Demorat brainwashing children.


LOL so our racism explains why we can't have good education? You do understand that we don't actually have to be racist.

That's right they don't have the same economic structures that keep people poor in the US. They don't deal with poverty stricken communities because they have programs, services and financial laws that keep people out of poverty.

Because their government funds honest sex education in schools instead of funding abstinence only. They support access to women's effective contraceptives and abortion is a medical issue not a political vehicle to elect conservative law makers.

Finland actually takes in .1% more immigrants than we do. Their immigrant population is is mostly Somali and Iraqi. They do have a problem at their border. Finland was once part of Russia and they would like to take it back now.

750,000 immigrants wanting to come in and become citizens is not the same problem as having Russia line up war machinery on your border.

Don't kid yourself into thinking that other countries have better education, less poverty, more stable job structures and better health care because it is easier for them to do these things. First you have to really want those things and be ready to support them, as do the Finns, and the Germans, and the Scandinavians, and the Lats and the Lithuanians and the French and the Swiss and the Singaporians and so on.

Americans just don't want to pay for education or health care or insurance for everyone, reduce poverty, curb racism, stop the nonsense over abortion or make corporations less rapacious.

Hell yes. If you voted for Donald Trump because you just didn't like those elitists but you hate unions, education, the post office, immigrants, and health care? You might be in a cult!

 

[NewfieMom]

The last person I need preaching from is a liberal.

Sometimes one finds wisdom in unexpected places.

 

[NewfieMom]

No one is forced to go to a public school.

Well, you have to admit that for people with very low incomes who must work, there is often little choice. That is why, for some of us, the quality of public school education is a priority. Unfortunately, since control is local, poor states and towns have have fewer resources. In some places the citizens of towns get to vote on the school budget, and they are not generous.

My town has excellent public schools, yet many people opt to send their children to independent (read: private) schools. I don't hear a great deal about homeschooling here. The town where my brother raised his children (now grown, as is my child) has a lower per capita income and the students have more needs. There are a lot of single parent families in his town and while my brother was still working (he is now retired) he was part of a program that had men like him meet high school boys on the school steps before the men went to work to form relationships and give them some male figures in their lives. (Once my brother retired, he was elected to the school board. He is serving his fourth year on it. It's good to retire and to work harder than ever but for no money. He also runs the board's finance committee.)

 

[multivita-man]

The disrespect for public schools and public school teachers can be traced back to Phyllis Schlafly. Her unrelenting denigration of public education started in the mid 1950s. She was a spokesman for the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. Her speeches were pro-conservative Christian, pro-family values, pro-patriotism and anti-UN, anti-Communism, and anti-public education. She spoke directly to parents; telling them that the school agenda was training their children to be non-patriotic radical liberals, how the history books were lying to children. She promoted private education and home schooling. She told parents that teachers were getting students to spy on and report on their parents behavior. She encouraged parents to tell their children that teachers did not respect their them or their Christian values.

Public education is not inherently inferior education. Denmark, Finland, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Germany all have excellent public education. But it is respected by all: students, parents, teachers, school boards, politicians, liberals and conservatives. (FYI they all have strong teachers unions also) Phyllis Schlafly was an accomplished speaker and a powerful voice in turning conservative Americans against public education and it's teachers. Respect and funding are hard to maintain when half of the population believes schools and teachers are malicious and destructive.

Meh, I think we've always been battling with anti-intellectualism in this country. We've always admired the yokel who could cut down a large tree and build a log cabin than the guy who could quote Shakespeare and Hegel.

 

[Paradoxical]

Sometimes one finds wisdom in unexpected places.

If you read my posts you will have seen that I often post that the new left has co-opted the Christian tactics and specifically evangelicals when they act cultish. They will trot out bible passages as if they are profound. I have seen this thousands of times in my Catholic upbringing and in my decades of debate with Christians. Just for kicks, I entered your entire post just to see. Here is what I got:

WISDOM IN UNEXPECTED PLACES - Scripture Union

scriptureunion.org

It is a religious site that quotes scripture to make whatever case they need to. You'll see in big bold blue letters:

WISDOM IN UNEXPECTED PLACES​

Perhaps someone has to have been in the Catholic cult to be able to readily detect the tactics that indoctrinators and propagandists use. I know your most likely didn't intend it but your post is typical of what cults do when they make it seem as if they have the answers you seek and that if you believed them, you would find that which you thirst for.

The wisdom I seek is only to know truth. I am not finding it all in religion or liberalism. What I do find are diversions, claims, misdirections, and answers that are all flowery and nice but wind up being meaningless and ones that anyone who thinks they hold the key to knowledge can use. For instance, a conservative could use your own words because they don't mean much, and I don't mean to be critical. What I do mean is that a Christian WILL use your same words to entice followers and believers because they really believe that their beliefs are the truth and makes them happy and should make others happy as well. If they work for you, who am I to say? Like Catholicism, it certainly doesn't work for me and as for liberalism, we can see the crime rates skyrocketing, inflation, poor socialist schools, and no progress after 30 years of coddling minorities and showering them with money and help, and what we get in response is that you need even MORE help and MORE money and liberalism isn't working because America is too capitalist and needs to be more like Finland or Europe.

When the religious are told that someone prayed fervently and eagerly and sincerely based on what the elders told them and nothing happened, they are told to pray harder, and surely God will hear. The liberals say we need to spend more, forgive the criminals, let them free, give away stuff through taxes and be happy about it. these are the same things taught by Christianity.

 

[weaver2]

Meh, I think we've always been battling with anti-intellectualism in this country. We've always admired the yokel who could cut down a large tree and build a log cabin than the guy who could quote Shakespeare and Hegel.

Issac Azimov thought so, too.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

It's a discouraging thought.

 

[Eurotrash]

Yet through taxation they force you to attend their socialist institution instead of giving you tgat same amount for a private school

Why should they give you that money for a private school? Why?

 

[jgarden47]

Public Educational Spending From Highest to Lowest Total Average Spent Per Pupil

State	K-12 Spending	Postsecondary Spending
District of Columbia	$22,832	$27,142
New York	$24,881	$33,760
Connecticut	$21,146	$20,284
Vermont	$21,219	$31,103
New Jersey	$21,334	$32,421
Pennsylvania	$16,897	$18,141
Oregon	$12,460	$33,289
Hawaii	$16,128	$39,372
Alaska	$18,392	$27,266
Washington	$14,348	$38,416
Massachusetts	$19,193	$18,813
Wyoming	$16,231	$33,111
Iowa	$11,935	$28,380
Delaware	$15,931	$23,146
New Hampshire	$17,456	$36,914
Michigan	$12,053	$22,316
California	$13,642	$17,946
Maryland	$15,582	$38,453
Rhode Island	$17,539	$18,524
North Dakota	$14,037	$21,746
New Mexico	$10,469	$38,516
Ohio	$13,437	$31,465
Illinois	$16,277	$32,881
Minnesota	$13,302	$26,646
Kentucky	$11,278	$27,277
Nebraska	$12,741	$24,316
Alabama	$10,108	$21,760
Virginia	$12,638	$26,561
Colorado	$11,070	$25,203
Wisconsin	$12,694	$40,038
Maine	$15,691	$30,293
South Carolina	$10,991	$29,045
Utah	$7,951	$22,187
Montana	$11,983	$25,055
Kansas	$11,327	$25,958
Arkansas	$10,414	$26,246
Texas	$9,871	$26,102
West Virginia	$12,266	$20,519
Mississippi	$9,255	$26,423
Indiana	$10,256	$41,705
Missouri	$11,349	$27,160
Louisiana	$11,917	$30,196
Georgia	$11,203	$43,420
South Dakota	$10,326	$21,522
North Carolina	$9,798	$27,505
Oklahoma	$9,200	$39,061
Tennessee	$9,942	$29,665
Arizona	$8,770	$25,166
Florida	$9,983	$23,834
Nevada	$9,124	$34,646
Idaho	$8,041	$27,760

U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics [2023]: per Pupil + Total

Find out how much the U.S. spends on public education and how the costs break down per student, by state and by level of government.

educationdata.org

The last person I need preaching from is a liberal. I moved from California because of their liberal policies after living there for decades. Read the papers if you want to see if I am a loner in this regard. White people and smart people and businesses are leaving California for states like Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, and states that are free from government overreach such as masks and vaccines and teaching white guilt.

I/we should not have to worry about just keeping our fingers crossed about public schools not hiring pedos, CRT advocates, left-wing radicals, and then going to school board meetings to protest only to have to further worry that the FBI and DOJ are investigating us as terrorists. If the schools were private we would have scores of choices in what is being taught, who is doing it, that good teachers get rewarded and bad ones get fired. Instead, we have schools where if a teacher does get fired it is a cold day in hell

1) Tennessee (46th), Arizona (47th) and Florida (48th) may be "free from government overreach" - but they are also notorious for having chronically underfunded public education for decades!

2) Unless "Paradoxical" is aware of some untapped reserve of 100,000's of qualified teachers with right-wing ideologies, there still remains 1 and only 1 "pool" of teachers - irrespective of the public or private sector!!

 

[Tigerace117]

So, drug cartels would go to sensitivity training?

No amount of soldiers can deal with a problem unless you tackle it’s root cause bud.....no matter how triggered that makes you.

 

[jgarden47]

Are you REALLY trying to compare Finland and the US? Its truly remarkable when leftists point to countries like Finland as models to aspire to. Finlands total population is less than the total population of Colorado. Finland is virtually all white. Finland has virtually NONE of the same economic structures the US has. Finland doesnt deal with poverty stricken communities in their major cities like we do in our rat party controlled cities. Most finnish families only have 1 child...there are less than a million children in the entire country 14 and under. The US faces the problem of more illegal immigrants in a 2 year span than the total population of Finland.

If only....right?

1) In marked contrast to "Vance Mack," I actually provide references to support my position - I don't assumption that everyone is prepared to accept my facts at face value!

2) Finland has a population of 5.53 million - given that constitutionally, public school education (K-12) has been delegated to the states, with 28 of America's 50 states having population less than Finland, I fail to see as to why "VanceMack" has seized on population as an excuse!

3) In 2022, America has an estimated GDP per Capita of $63,416, as compared to Finland's $49,851 - given that the USA is a far wealthier nation than its Finnish counterpart, the fact that latter "doesn't deal with poverty stricken communities in their major cities" is the result of those "leftist" policies designed to provide for a more equal distribution of wealth, avoiding the problems that result when a nation allows itself to become a divided society of "HAVES AND HAVE NOTS!"

4) From 2010 to 2020, Finland averaged 2.5 immigrants per 1000 inhabitants, as opposed to 2.9 immigrants per 100,000 inhabitants for the US - during that period Finland received from 26,000 to 36,400 immigrants annually, which would equate to approximately 1,742,000 to 2,439,000 immigrants entering America yearly!

5) Finland has a fertility rate of 1.74 children born/woman (2022), only 0.1 less than the 1.84 children born/woman (2022) in the US!

6) From an educational perspective, the number of children per family is irrelevant!

Finland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

GDP per Capita by Country 2024

worldpopulationreview.com

List of sovereign states by net migration rate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[VanceMack]

1) In marked contrast to "Vance Mack," I actually provide references to support my position - I don't assumption that everyone is prepared to accept my facts at face value!

2) Finland has a population of 5.53 million - given that constitutionally, public school education (K-12) has been delegated to the states, with 28 of America's 50 states having population less than Finland, I fail to see as to why "VanceMack" has seized on population as an excuse!

3) In 2022, America has an estimated GDP per Capita of $63,416, as compared to Finland's $49,851 - given that the USA is a far wealthier nation than its Finnish counterpart, the fact that latter "doesn't deal with poverty stricken communities in their major cities" is the result of those "leftist" policies designed to provide for a more equal distribution of wealth, avoiding the problems that result when a nation allows itself to become a divided society of "HAVES AND HAVE NOTS!"

4) From 2010 to 2020, Finland averaged 2.5 immigrants per 1000 inhabitants, as opposed to 2.9 immigrants per 100,000 inhabitants for the US - during that period Finland received from 26,000 to 36,400 immigrants annually, which would equate to approximately 1,742,000 to 2,439,000 immigrants entering America yearly!

5) Finland has a fertility rate of 1.74 children born/woman (2022), only 0.1 less than the 1.84 children born/woman (2022) in the US!

6) From an educational perspective, the number of children per family is irrelevant!

Finland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

GDP per Capita by Country 2024

worldpopulationreview.com

List of sovereign states by net migration rate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So again...

Are you REALLY trying to compare Finland and the US? Its truly remarkable when leftists point to countries like Finland as models to aspire to. Finlands total population is less than the total population of Colorado. Finland is virtually all white. Finland has virtually NONE of the same economic structures the US has. Finland doesnt deal with poverty stricken communities in their major cities like we do in our rat party controlled cities. Most Finnish families only have 1 child...there are less than a million children in the entire country 14 and under. The US faces the problem of more illegal immigrants in a 2 year span than the total population of Finland.

The simple fact of the matter is that the two countries are nothing alike...in any way shape or form.

 

[The Mark]

"The teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels — and school officials everywhere are scrambling to ensure that, as students return to classrooms, someone will be there to educate them.

“I have never seen it this bad,” Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said of the teacher shortage. “Right now it’s number one on the list of issues that are concerning school districts ... necessity is the mother of invention, and hard-pressed districts are going to have to come up with some solutions.”

Why are America’s schools so short-staffed? Experts point to a confluence of factors including pandemic-induced teacher exhaustion, low pay and some educators’ sense that politicians and parents — and sometimes their own school board members — have little respect for their profession amid an escalating educational culture war that has seen many districts and states pass policies and laws restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, racism, gender and sexual orientation, as well as LGBTQ issues."

Link

Teachers have been demonized for years but politicians getting involved with what goes on UN the classroom, something we see in authoritarian countries, has made it decidedly worse.

I want to say you couldn't pay me enough money to teach some of the bullshit I've been hearing teachers required to teach in some areas, but maybe my self-respect has a price.

Plus, ya'know, I don't have a teaching license or training, or however that works.

If you combine low pay with being required teach your students things you either don't believe (questionable reason) or know to be false (decent reason), I can see why there's a shortage.


Ban private schools.
All of them.

Finland did, and they're apparently the best at schools.

 

[joluoto]

Teachers treated like shit.

Everyone is confused: Why are there no teachers?

 

[joluoto]

Finland did, and they're apparently the best at schools.

Not true, not sure why international media is saying this. We heavily regulate private schools, they basically have to follow the same curriculum as public schools with very few deviations, and it's true some private schools closed when that became law. But we have private schools in Finland.

 

[snakestretcher]

Brats, crazy parents, insane political influence, underlying threat of violence, and under appreciation for $16 dollars an hour. Geez, where can I sign up? /s

Plus mountains of bureaucracy and having to deal with reams of paperwork which has nothing to do with the actual classroom. It's much the same here. This was 2015; nothing has changed...

Bureaucracy is sucking the life out of teaching

In William Faulkner’s short story The Tall Men, a local marshall and a young litigious county official visit a rural family to arrest two brothers for failing to register for the draft. They find t…

chronotopeblog.com

 

[multivita-man]

Plus mountains of bureaucracy and having to deal with reams of paperwork which has nothing to do with the actual classroom. It's much the same here. This was 2015; nothing has changed...

Bureaucracy is sucking the life out of teaching

In William Faulkner’s short story The Tall Men, a local marshall and a young litigious county official visit a rural family to arrest two brothers for failing to register for the draft. They find t…

chronotopeblog.com

I had an Israeli-American friend once who served in the IDF. We were both working at a McJob once and he once commented that "You know, this job reminds me of the military. You're more worried about staying out of trouble than you are actually doing your ****ing job." Sadly, I think that's what formal teaching, particularly in the public K-12 levels, has become.

I worked in higher-ed for about 10+ years before other opportunities finally opened up, and I wouldn't dream of going back now, despite the fact that classroom teaching is my first love. There's just no job security in it, and if you're lucky enough to get it, you've always got the minders dropping in for observations and then demanding that you do a minimum number of presentations and a minimum number of publications, regardless of how ridiculously unimportant and unoriginal the subject might be - just find a new angle for it, lol.

My response to that was like my response to many of the posts on this board, lol: Uh, okay.

 

[multivita-man]

Issac Azimov thought so, too.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

It's a discouraging thought.

In a sense, I actually get it.

When this country was founded, it was an unfathomably large, untamed landmass. Before industrialization, before we really began settling this place, it must have seemed like being on another planet. It was truly the land of abundance. The population density and the resource utilization per capita was well within Malthusian limits - and that's an understatement.

For much of our history, we needed people who could clear the land and do things with it. Along more populous and commercially active seaports, we needed people with different skills - longshoremen or dockworkers, navigators & captains, shipbuilders, merchants, traders, stock jobbers. But as we expanded inland, we needed rough, rugged, badass people who could deal with the elements and tame the land. The idea of an American nation rode on the backs of these kinds of creative, adaptive individuals, and it's very much a part of our identity today.

The difference is, in 2022, we're a highly complex society of 330 million people and growing. To keep a society this populated and this complex requires an entirely different skillset. It requires intellect and people who specialize not only in areas like science and technology but also in policy and the ability to communicate with people. Anti-intellectualism impairs the ability of a complex civilization to function.

 

[snakestretcher]

I had an Israeli-American friend once who served in the IDF. We were both working at a McJob once and he once commented that "You know, this job reminds me of the military. You're more worried about staying out of trouble than you are actually doing your ****ing job." Sadly, I think that's what formal teaching, particularly in the public K-12 levels, has become.

I worked in higher-ed for about 10+ years before other opportunities finally opened up, and I wouldn't dream of going back now, despite the fact that classroom teaching is my first love. There's just no job security in it, and if you're lucky enough to get it, you've always got the minders dropping in for observations and then demanding that you do a minimum number of presentations and a minimum number of publications, regardless of how ridiculously unimportant and unoriginal the subject might be - just find a new angle for it, lol.

My response to that was like my response to many of the posts on this board, lol: Uh, okay.

I decided I wanted to teach after having brought up my child alone; and with nothing to speak of on my CV something vocational seemed an attractive proposition. After completing a college course I was offered a place at Exeter Uni to do a B.Ed. For various reasons I had to decline, but of the 20 or so students who were with me at college and who were similarly anxious to teach, only one still does. The others soon discovered that the idyllic country school of angelic kids, eager to learn, didn't exist; the reality was that they became little more than office clerks.
I eventually found myself working in cervical cytopathology, completely by accident, but that's another story.

 

[multivita-man]

Here's the thing: you know how the righties on this forum are always talking about how the libs and Black Lives Matter have forced the police to quit in droves and that's why police departments are understaffed?

Well the truth is more complex than that.

All sectors of the economy are being impacted by the same problem: people who for years were accustomed to being pigeonholed into certain careers are now having a great big 'rethink' of their entire lives, and they're asking themselves, Why am I putting up with this shit? I can go get some private sector job for twice the amount of money.

They can because over the past 2 years they've been seeing/hearing from higher paying employers in better paying fields things like:

'Need new people NOW!

Degree? Pfff!

Work history? Work history, schmirk history.

We'd prefer you not be a convicted felon, but we're even willing to consider your application even then.

It's the same thing for a wide range of fields, including the services field which was forced to raise wages after years of stagnation.

And right on cue, lol: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/05/jobs-report-july-2022-528000.html

• Nonfarm payrolls rose 528,000 for the month and the unemployment rate was 3.5%, easily topping the Dow Jones estimates of 258,000 and 3.6%, respectively.
• Wage growth also surged, as average hourly earnings jumped 0.5% for the month and 5.2% from a year ago, higher than estimates.

And with the Fed likely to add another .75 basis point rate hike to rising interest rates to combat inflation that just won't cool down, how many of you think that ex-teachers, ex-cops, ex-postal workers, ex-paper pushers, are gonna rush back to their stagnant public sector wages and increasingly insecure jobs?

 

[Paradoxical]

Public Educational Spending From Highest to Lowest Total Average Spent Per Pupil

State	K-12 Spending	Postsecondary Spending
District of Columbia	$22,832	$27,142
New York	$24,881	$33,760
Connecticut	$21,146	$20,284
Vermont	$21,219	$31,103
New Jersey	$21,334	$32,421
Pennsylvania	$16,897	$18,141
Oregon	$12,460	$33,289
Hawaii	$16,128	$39,372
Alaska	$18,392	$27,266
Washington	$14,348	$38,416
Massachusetts	$19,193	$18,813
Wyoming	$16,231	$33,111
Iowa	$11,935	$28,380
Delaware	$15,931	$23,146
New Hampshire	$17,456	$36,914
Michigan	$12,053	$22,316
California	$13,642	$17,946
Maryland	$15,582	$38,453
Rhode Island	$17,539	$18,524
North Dakota	$14,037	$21,746
New Mexico	$10,469	$38,516
Ohio	$13,437	$31,465
Illinois	$16,277	$32,881
Minnesota	$13,302	$26,646
Kentucky	$11,278	$27,277
Nebraska	$12,741	$24,316
Alabama	$10,108	$21,760
Virginia	$12,638	$26,561
Colorado	$11,070	$25,203
Wisconsin	$12,694	$40,038
Maine	$15,691	$30,293
South Carolina	$10,991	$29,045
Utah	$7,951	$22,187
Montana	$11,983	$25,055
Kansas	$11,327	$25,958
Arkansas	$10,414	$26,246
Texas	$9,871	$26,102
West Virginia	$12,266	$20,519
Mississippi	$9,255	$26,423
Indiana	$10,256	$41,705
Missouri	$11,349	$27,160
Louisiana	$11,917	$30,196
Georgia	$11,203	$43,420
South Dakota	$10,326	$21,522
North Carolina	$9,798	$27,505
Oklahoma	$9,200	$39,061
Tennessee	$9,942	$29,665
Arizona	$8,770	$25,166
Florida	$9,983	$23,834
Nevada	$9,124	$34,646
Idaho	$8,041	$27,760

U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics [2023]: per Pupil + Total

Find out how much the U.S. spends on public education and how the costs break down per student, by state and by level of government.

educationdata.org

1) Tennessee (46th), Arizona (47th) and Florida (48th) may be "free from government overreach" - but they are also notorious for having chronically underfunded public education for decades!

2) Unless "Paradoxical" is aware of some untapped reserve of 100,000's of qualified teachers with right-wing ideologies, there still remains 1 and only 1 "pool" of teachers - irrespective of the public or private sector!!

I see the chart of spending per student and of course, it is the right of the state to decide how much they will allocate to the socialist public schools. The Feds give 8% with more strings than a baby grand piano and then, through taxation, the state provides the balance. I'm not sure what you're getting at with the chart. My point is that if you took the same amount of money including the money a state-run school doesn't pay in land and building taxes and gave that to the private sector, you would have private schools cropping up on every street corner and well run with dedicated teachers controlled only by a requirement(s) that they teach reading, writing and arithmetic. IF they wanted to teach witchcraft or CRT or that white people are the devil, so be it. that school would be out of business next year. As it is now, the public schools can teach that and we just have to like it.

 

[Paradoxical]

No amount of soldiers can deal with a problem unless you tackle it’s root cause bud.....no matter how triggered that makes you.

The root cause is what?

 

[weaver2]

In a sense, I actually get it.

When this country was founded, it was an unfathomably large, untamed landmass. Before industrialization, before we really began settling this place, it must have seemed like being on another planet. It was truly the land of abundance. The population density and the resource utilization per capita was well within Malthusian limits - and that's an understatement.

For much of our history, we needed people who could clear the land and do things with it. Along more populous and commercially active seaports, we needed people with different skills - longshoremen or dockworkers, navigators & captains, shipbuilders, merchants, traders, stock jobbers. But as we expanded inland, we needed rough, rugged, badass people who could deal with the elements and tame the land. The idea of an American nation rode on the backs of these kinds of creative, adaptive individuals, and it's very much a part of our identity today.

The difference is, in 2022, we're a highly complex society of 330 million people and growing. To keep a society this populated and this complex requires an entirely different skillset. It requires intellect and people who specialize not only in areas like science and technology but also in policy and the ability to communicate with people. Anti-intellectualism impairs the ability of a complex civilization to function.

Education doesn't take away the ability to clear the land, cut trees, build ships, live rough and create a new country.