> why would you go to grade school and high school at institutions that produce graduates like that?
Do you not know how U.S. K-12 public schools are funded by local property taxes, which means the quality of a child's education is a direct causal relationship of the wealth of their neighborhood?
Why don't these children just grow up in richer neighborhoods?
Equity remains a valid criticism of LCFF in California specifically.
For one unremarkable observation in this area, see the following think tank report:
> States often commission cost studies to establish the level of funding required to help students meet state standards. LPI analyzed five of the more recent of these studies [...] All of these studies recommended additional weighted funding to support English learners and students considered "at-risk," which was most often defined by a measure of family income and also included other factors [...] The recommended weights for English learners in these studies ranged from 15% to 40% of the base grant level in each state. The recommended weights for at-risk students ranged from 30% to 81%. Compared to the recommended funding in these states, the LCFF’s supplemental grant weight of 20% is at the lower end of the recommended range of weights for English learners and below the range of weights for at-risk students.
The quality of an education isn't proportional to the amount of money spent; learning is remarkably cheap if a school wants to focus on outcomes. There's a bit of give in where the teacher sits on the bumpkin-genius scale (although even then, the range of salaries isn't that wide in the big picture).
Although forcing the funding to go through a collective rather than letting people choose a school and pay on in individual basis would probably deliver a pretty serious blow to the quality.
The school system is downstream broader social issues here. It can be shockingly expensive to deal with the various behavioral problems that disproportionately impact students from lower income communities. Students from stable homes with available and invested parents practically teach themselves.
The top end may not be limited by money, but the bottom of education is, especially when it comes to public k-12 schools.
I doubt most people would even believe the differences until they saw them, I wouldn't of believed public school could vary that much until I personally saw it. Going from some middling school with a half dozen rich properties around, versus a truly poor rural school, showed me how true it is. The better middle school was teaching topics that the poor rural school didn't even broach until senior year. Our civics book from the late 2000s talked about the civil rights movement as an ongoing and building issue too keep an eye on, and half the school books had kid's grandparents name signed in them. Our calculus class, which was downgraded to pre-calc after a few years because so many kids failed college calc entrance exams, had a teacher bragging about how it only took her 3 tries to pass calc 102 in order to qualify for that teaching position. You certainly didn't get very many good teachers when they pay was that far below the national median wage, and it was sad to watch them struggle to afford things as simple as whiteboard markers, or copy paper in order to print student assignments on, because yes the school couldn't afford and didn't supply copy paper for teachers to print assignments on other than a literal single ream of paper to last the entire year.
Fear not - the American school system was built on and holds fast to the supposition that the affluent should be able to avoid any unwanted exposure to the problems of those less fortunate than themselves.
Do you not know that the US is a Federal system and there are (at minimum) 50 different ways that schools are funded?
California's schools (for instance) aren't funded by local taxes, they're funded by the state and allocated funding based on a formula[1] of performance, need, population, etc. They can be augmented by local taxes, but in practice that's rare as the wealthy just avoid the system altogether; instead, opting for private institutions.
That's at least 12% of the population that is not funded in the manner you outline.
1 - https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/