Education is not housing, though, and has different goals. Education subsidies at higher levels is off. If we just paid most of the tuition and books, I think folks would care more that the schools are spending on sports instead of education. I'd certainly not do it with tax dollars and not allow colleges to charge students. Sports scholarships would be a thing of the past. I also think we could revamp degrees to have more pointed classes, insisting the "well rounded" education happen before college. It could probably actually make a masters be a 5 and sometimes 6 year program instead of 6-7 years, for example.
At the lower levels, some of our problem is funding by school district instead of distributing state-wide or country-wide. School are still segregated in many ways and the system has created wide disparities between schools because of funding. Sure, you need to adapt a little to the local level, but that's mostly for things like more special education students, more students not speaking english, and/or higher rates of poverty, which affects learning. The last case is some of what has made some of our schools bad, and the rest of us act like we don't care because it isn't our kids.
At the lower levels, some of our problem is funding by school district instead of distributing state-wide or country-wide. School are still segregated in many ways and the system has created wide disparities between schools because of funding. Sure, you need to adapt a little to the local level, but that's mostly for things like more special education students, more students not speaking english, and/or higher rates of poverty, which affects learning. The last case is some of what has made some of our schools bad, and the rest of us act like we don't care because it isn't our kids.