This blog started as a comment on my last blog on education.  I have expanded a comment on that blog into this blog.

Today, teaching is generally thought of as a respectable profession, unlike 100 years ago when teachers were sometimes respected and sometimes not.  Nevertheless, teachers, and colleges in general, have placed too much emphasis (in my opinion) on college degrees and not enough on actual teaching ability.  This is a hotly contested issue in the US.  Should teachers be paid based on teaching skill, years of experience, education, or by some measure of productivity.  The problem, in my mind, with the last one, is that productivity is difficult to measure.  If you measure it based on student progress on tests, you may end up penalizing students based on the tax system rather than on teaching skill. 

How can that be?  Well, if rich students go to better funded schools (in the US tax money from schools comes mainly from the local community), then they may have better resources and do better on tests.  Students from poor areas, were the lower tax money coming in buys poorly quality buildings and teaching supplies, may do worse on tests even if they had the best teachers.  But poor schools pay teachers less because they have less money.  So, it is quite confusing. 

The US education system went through tremendous change in the 1970s when schools were forced to integrate.  Local politicians were all voted out of office because no one wanted white children in previously all-black school or black children in white schools, in many parts of the country. The solution when the national government forced school integration (=no more separation of student purely by race) a few richer black kids were allowed to go to the poorest white schools in two.  And a few of the poorest white kids were forced to go to the richest black schools in town.  I saw this around 1980 when I saw the school integration plan for Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  That is, the schools were and still remain segregated in the US based on income, but the national government require integration based on race.  This was accomplish by "busing." That is, children who formerly went to schools near their homes (rich black children and poor white children) were bussed to schools farther from their homes so the schools could be integrated.

To reiterate (=repeat), the American school system was one segregated.  White children attended all white schools.  Anyone who was not white was forced to go to the "black" schools for African American children.  Asians, American Indians, and others did not have their own schools, in most cases.  They were considered "people of color" and were lumped in with the black by default.  

In the US, schools are primarily supported by local property taxes. Therefore, rich communities with more money pay more taxes and have better schools.  The people in poor communities make less money so they pay less in taxes and as a result, their schools get less money to work with.  The rich people in the US call this "local control" of schools and are adamantly (sometimes violently) opposed to having to pay for the education of poor children.  Rather than say they don't want all schools to be equally funded, they use the lame excuse of wanting "local control" of the local schools.  This is, in fact, a method of segregation that still exists to this day.  As noted above, poor white children still go to the poorest schools.  Bussing allowed a few black children to go to the poorest white schools.  But the real issue of inequality has still not been address, and probably never will be.  Rich people will never have their children attending schools in poorer communities anywhere, even if they were forced to accept a few of the more well-to-do children from black families.

Those same people will still argue vehemently (=strongly and forcefully) that they are not prejudiced.  "Yeah, right, you say so; I don't believe it," would be my response.