17 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: The Mental Gymnastics is Infuriating
What gives you the impression of administration bloat?
Most school funded is by the district not by the department of education. Schools get direct funds from title one funds which are for schools with high concentration of students living in poverty.
I don't trust the trump/musk administration to give those funds directly to states or districts. And I wouldn't be surprised if the school districts decide to use their title one funds to do fakakta things like build a new football stadium
Comment by flyingdics at 08/03/2025 at 20:36 UTC
17 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Yeah, the baseline conservative assumption that all government departments are terribly bloated rarely comes with any evidence.
Comment by DeeEllEll at 08/03/2025 at 20:53 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I’m solidly blue and vote that way. That said, when conducting my doctoral research, I found that the average U.S. school district spends way more on administration than Finland or South Korea. We would benefit from cutting a lot of central office administration in individual districts. But that money is local. Discontinuing the US Dept of Ed is the wrong move.
Comment by TSyverson at 08/03/2025 at 23:29 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Probably gets the impression of administration bloat because its literally reality.
Think back to how many admin you had in your school as a kid. How many do you have now? What sorts of measurable improvements have been made?
Anecdotal, of course, but if you look at national averages, spending in the last 20 years has rocketed upwards, while teacher spending has remained relatively the same, accounting for inflation, and student readiness has remained about steady or dropped.