> There aren’t suddenly less kids to educate, less elderly that need health care or less cases in federal court as the population grows.
There are fewer kids to educate, but all the school funding formulas are based on number of kids, so as there are fewer kids, there are less federal and state funds for the kids (but schools have a lot of fixed costs). And there is a lot more legally mandated costs for special education than in previous decades due to legally mandated “Individual Education Plans”.
This means less resources overall, and especially less resources for higher achieving kids. Rich people who can supplement their kids’ education will benefit, and lower class kids who used public education systems to break their families out of the lower class will be less likely to succeed.
There are fewer kids to educate, but all the school funding formulas are based on number of kids, so as there are fewer kids, there are less federal and state funds for the kids (but schools have a lot of fixed costs). And there is a lot more legally mandated costs for special education than in previous decades due to legally mandated “Individual Education Plans”.
This means less resources overall, and especially less resources for higher achieving kids. Rich people who can supplement their kids’ education will benefit, and lower class kids who used public education systems to break their families out of the lower class will be less likely to succeed.
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/03/education-enrollment-cliff-...
> By the numbers: The U.S. is expected to reach "peak high school graduate" in 2025, when around 3.9 million young people will graduate, per WICHE.
>By 2037, there'll be only about 3.5 million high school graduates, WICHE projects — a 10.7% decrease.