For my part of the conversation, I think what I'm implying is we might get better outcomes if we paid teachers more.

That being said... there's a critique that keeps coming up that the structure of public education is largely unchanged since Victorian times. I've heard people say that the reason you get kids up in the morning and have them move from class to class every hour is to prepare them for life in the mines and mills. Certainly there is some validity to this observation. If we're trying to prepare students for the world of modern work, maybe they should be in front of a computer monitor for 8 hours a day and run to a local gym in 1 hour shifts in an effort to ensure their lives are not completely sedentary.

There's an "unschooling movement" that has made some interesting points, but still gets some of the details wrong (in my opinion.) "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is a great read, even if you disagree with Freire's politics or semiotics.

When I say "high school is nothing more than child-care" I should probably say "I fear high school is nothing more than child-care" or "Some high schools are nothing more than child-care." I don't think low academic achievement is universal, but I also think there's a correlation between per-capita spending and academic achievement.

Most (many?) public schools in the US were set up in the post-war period to be funded with property taxes. But since the 60s / 70s many (most?) states have policies similar to California's Prop 13 that limited property taxes. [Don't have the data on this handy, point me at the data if I'm wrong.] So it seems like it's a perfect storm of decreasing teacher salaries, deferred maintenance for school district property and low academic achievement.

As a society, we can have as good a school system as we're willing to pay for.

At this point, if there's any way to supplement public school budgets with money from the football stadium... I'm all for it. I would just prefer that the money goes from the profitable football program to the general academic fund and not the other way around.

[Edit: I'm informed out of band that there's a correlation between a state's median income and public school educational achievement. This is a small, but important update on the assertion above saying there's a correlation between per-capita spending and academic achievement.]

> For my part of the conversation, I think what I'm implying is we might get better outcomes if we paid teachers more.

That is not at all the impression that I got reading your original comment. It seemed (and continues to seem, on a second reading), that you disagree with further funding education, because there's no point, high schools "just" day care for teenagers.

Please consider that, just because someone doesn't bother to reply to you, it doesn't mean that you're right. They may simply see no point in arguing with some stranger with whom they'll hopefully never have to interact. With this follow-up comment, it seems to me that your actual opinions are significantly different from both the words and tone in your initial message. That isn't helped by the notes about downvotes without comments (and the Latin snark in the edit).