Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

the loss of family structure

no leadership at home

thats your problem and no amount of money will overcome that

It starts with education, and I will die on that hill.

I'm actually not sure that's true. For education to have an effect, you have to have students who want to be there and apply themselves. Students who have positive role models around them to show them what having an education is worth. It's usually good if the entire community around a student is the same, such that they have those same values of education, and not living up to that ideal is looked down upon. 

Consider a community where effectively no parents have gone to college. Where most kids are raised by single moms, and unwed teen motherhood is effectively normalized. Where a large portion of the populace is on public assistance so "having a job" is seen as optional. Where very few students even think of going to college. Where so many students are disaffected by education that it's effectively impossible for a teacher to control a classroom, making it harder for the few students who want to apply themselves to succeed. For those kids whose parents actually do work, they're latch-key kids who can't come home at the end of the day and ask a parent for help with homework because the hours the parent works to survive make them largely absentee parents. 

Edward James Olmos or Michelle Pfeiffer aren't going to turn that around. Their life is not a movie. 

Education is a tool. If the local culture doesn't value the tool, nobody is going to use it. 

choices

environment, familiarity, observation


No one learns a language in silence.  
If everyone around you makes bad choices, so will you.

Consider a community where effectively no parents have gone to college. Where most kids are raised by single moms, and unwed teen motherhood is effectively normalized. Where a large portion of the populace is on public assistance so "having a job" is seen as optional. Where very few students even think of going to college. Where so many students are disaffected by education that it's effectively impossible for a teacher to control a classroom, making it harder for the few students who want to apply themselves to succeed. For those kids whose parents actually do work, they're latch-key kids who can't come home at the end of the day and ask a parent for help with homework because the hours the parent works to survive make them largely absentee parents.

You just described most of rural America. 

You just described most of rural America.

They don't call it "public assistance."

They call it "farm subsidies."

They don't call it "public assistance."

They call it "farm subsidies."

someone has to grow cotton outside of Phoenix 

I assume the $$$ to run the Federal Department of Education is calculated in the expenditure?
it shouldn't. it's not getting close to a classroom

Well, I'd guess a lot of "other" doesn't  get near a classroom either.  It's spending on "education", or intended to be, and it's a small percentage anyway.