There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays without getting into politics but politics and structural inequality are at the core of this. For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property. But what this me…
>But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of improving property values by having better schools and thus generating more tax revenue and so on. No. This is a complete red-herring. Every school in the US is good enough to provide quality education. Every school in the US is staffed by good, well-trained teachers. Every child gets free te…
Unfortunately, this really isn't the case. There are many good teachers, and most teachers are genuinely passionate, hard workers. But many teachers get into teaching not because of a mastery of their subject matter or even teaching but because they want to be paid babysitters, more or less.
E.g. in Canada, which has similar issues, Ontario recently axed its math certification test for public school teachers because too many teachers were failing it and because it had "a disproportionate adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates." And, for demonstrative purposes, a sample test that prospective teachers were failing:
https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions/1
But there's not an easy solution. ~25% of test takers were failing it (and more for "racialized" candidates), and most people don't want to become teachers because it's a terrible work environment.