The funny part is the article clearly does understand what graft is, because they then write this:
Besides, America recently ran a very large natural experiment in dropping money on schools that, in a word, failed. During the pandemic, Congress appropriated a gargantuan sum of money, $190 billion, to ameliorate learning loss, most of it as part of the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan. (For scale, this is roughly the sum recently given to the Trump administration to fund its border wall and immigration-enforcement agenda.) States were given latitude to spend their funds as they saw fit, which, it seems, was a mistake. Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems and obtaining electric buses. “The scientific term for this is that we didn’t get jack shit out of that money,” says Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank. “There are some studies that can detect small impacts, but they’re small. I think it’s also fair to say that a lot of the money was wasted.”
So their conclusion is that spending more on students won’t work, because uh… schools when given money don’t spend on students, and damn I guess there’s no way to make them do that huh?
Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems
That’s not even necessarily all graft, that’s just that the schools are falling apart and get no maintenance, which is part of why the students are illiterate.
Well sure, but I imagine at least 50% of that HVAC cost goes towards kickbacks for the contractors who install those systems that are friends of some distributor of that money etc etc. Agreed though, yeah the schools are crumbling so maybe you gotta fix that, because no matter what “high expectations” you have kids can’t read in 100 degree heat and no AC.
Jesus fucking Christ you Americans with your AC addiction. You know they have these things called windows nowadays that you can just open to let fresh air in?
The funny part is the article clearly does understand what graft is, because they then write this:
So their conclusion is that spending more on students won’t work, because uh… schools when given money don’t spend on students, and damn I guess there’s no way to make them do that huh?
That’s not even necessarily all graft, that’s just that the schools are falling apart and get no maintenance, which is part of why the students are illiterate.
Well sure, but I imagine at least 50% of that HVAC cost goes towards kickbacks for the contractors who install those systems that are friends of some distributor of that money etc etc. Agreed though, yeah the schools are crumbling so maybe you gotta fix that, because no matter what “high expectations” you have kids can’t read in 100 degree heat and no AC.
CO2 also makes you measurably dumber even at low concentrations, having HVAC helps a lot with that
Jesus fucking Christ you Americans with your AC addiction. You know they have these things called windows nowadays that you can just open to let fresh air in?
That works in some places, sure, but when it’s 40ºC and 85% humidity you don’t want to open a window.
Some places were not meant for human habitation.
An ever-growing list too