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specialp | on: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
The start of the funnel is also the most racist and class discriminatory. Almost every school in the USA takes pupils from districts where the property owners pay the taxes for the schools. Rich areas get much more resources and support. Poor students get put into less funded schools and suffer from not having mentorship or peers to look up to.

I live on Long Island and we have a majority white population. Despite that we have 2 school districts that are almost 100% black. That is where the problem is. You are not giving these students a chance. When I am going through resumes I am not getting a diverse pool of qualified candidates because these poor people have been historically oppressed into a caste of poor schooling and neighborhoods.

seanmcdirmid | parent | next
Washington state pools property tax money and then redistributed it equitably across the state to pay for education on a per pupil basis. This mainly means poorer eastern Washington districts are subsidized by richer western Washington districts, and districts that lose students to private schools take a direct hit in their funding.
IcyWindows | root | parent | next
It doesn't help when the Seattle school superintendent told parents that if they didn't like their school policies, they could leave.
streptomycin | root | parent | next
NJ is even more extreme, the poor districts get more funding and it's been that way for decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district

This is true many places. But I think the "property tax explains everything" talking point is going to persist a long time, because it's very convenient.

blindriver | root | parent
This is the same as California.

EDIT: I was wrong, and explain it as a comment below.

dragonwriter | root | parent
No, it isn't.

(1) California property tax stays local, and is not pooled,

(2) However, due to Prop 13, property taxes are very small in California, and just over half of total funding for school districts comes from the state,

(3) Distribution of funding (either just the state funds or total funding) is not equal per-student across districts, with per student expenditures ranging widely across districts.

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wyager | parent | next
America spends more money per student, in almost any school district, than any European country. The problem is not "resources and support". We've tried "resources and support" for 50 years, so the (a priori entirely fantastical) notion that just throwing more money at the problem would make it go away has been thoroughly disproven.
eapressoandcats | root | parent | next
I don’t think that’s true. It looks like the US has pretty similar spending to European countries at least as a percentage of GDP: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
wyager | root | parent
"As a percentage of GDP" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Why would we normalize this to GDP?
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Loughla | root | parent
Want to hear my hot take?

It's not funding (though that is A problem).

It's not attracting qualified, talented teachers (though that is A problem).

The main problem is parents and society. Individualism means parents know better than the schools, and teach their kids that attitude as well. This cuts across class, ethnicity, and any other demographic marker you can think of.

Am I right? I don't know, but I think I am.

wyager | root | parent
If you condition on race, American students do better (e.g. on PISA) than almost any other country with a few exceptions like Hong Kong. American test cores are (slightly better than) what you expect given our demographics, which are by far the strongest predictor of population educational attainment.
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whimsicalism | parent | next
as someone who grew up attending a majority black school district, this is not really true.... underfunded majority minority districts typically more than have the gap made up by federal funds and the causal evidence on returns on education funding suggests extremely limited impact if any
Loughla | root | parent
That's just false. Nearly every state relies disproportionately on local property taxes to fund schools. Federal dollars tend to be supplemental and come in the form of food subsidies or Title grants. They absolutely do not "more than have the gap made up" unless you're in a state with an equity funding pool (like Washington).
bberenberg | root | parent | next
I have heard that Baltimore school performance is the counterpoint here, but I have never dug into it myself. Do you happen to know if there is a material point there or obfuscation of some form?
klooney | root | parent | next
Title 1 schools can get a ton of money. Smartboards in every class, school supplies fully stocked, not the usual "grim downward spiral" feel of a public school.
ryan93 | root | parent
Places like Baltimore often have substantially more funding than many suburban districts
DragonStrength | parent | next
Much of our economic disparity in this country remains regional. We have states full of poor White and Black people. Of course, I have never worked anywhere that "diverse" wasn't only about skin color and gender, which means kids in West Virginia and Alabama are treated like they grew up in Malibu. It's gotten worse where I live in recent years since those historically disadvantaged schools are also 50% English as a second language now with no new resources.

Do any tech companies have programs to hire out of historically disadvantaged regions of the US?

bcrosby95 | parent | next
In California funding is based upon attendance. The main place wealthy neighborhoods get extra money here is through PTAs rather than property taxes.

This is in addition to what the other commenter said. I'm not very well informed about how other states fund their schools, but even if this blanket generalization is true in some places, there's enough evidence out there that funding isn't the only or maybe even the main problem.

dmix | root | parent
US ranks very high in the world in gov spending on education at 6% of GDP. Higher than Canada, France, Germany, UK, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

The EU as a whole for example is around 4.7% https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

polski-g | parent | next
Most of what you said is just wrong.

"Poor students" have the most support in the country: https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2024/are-poor-urban-districts-... Baltimore public schools get $30k per student. Carmel, IN public schools spend $10k per student.

You should look into heritability. There is no longitudinal impact on adult outcomes as a result of parenting/schooling practices.

jyounker | root | parent
I'm assuming you are not familiar with this study: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/chk_aer_mto_04...

It shows that if a poor family moves from a poorer school district to a richer school district, and they have children under 13, then those children are significantly more successful than children whose families remain in the poorer school district. However, after 13 there seems to be a slight negative effect.

There are other studies showing similar effedcts.

Summary: It's not genetics.

seanmcdirmid | root | parent | next
A lot of that has to do with who your kid goes to school with. If we take equally funded schools (in WA that’s easy since education is primarily funded by the state), the results are still different: districts with richer families do better probably because they get more support at home, but even lower income students do better since they feel like they need to keep up with their classmates.
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thfuran | root | parent | next
Heritable doesn't mean genetic. Language and money are heritable.
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bcrosby95 | root | parent | next
> Summary: It's not genetics.

No one said its genetics. They're saying its not only funding.

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| root | parent | next
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whimsicalism | root | parent
that is poor evidence for a school funding effect, but yes - environment is important. i will say that this is the first time i've ever seen MTO cited as a positive example of the impact, my understanding (not very informed) was that it is considered a negative result.

i wish these analyses were pre-registered, but i recognize that is difficult to do for very long timespan studies like this

ok123456 | parent
Yes, class is the root divide. However, rejecting that fact is dogma for the people running these DEI programs.

This is intentional because then DEI is intended to be a self-help religion for the corporate class designed to deflect the externalities that they produce, and not about actual material conditions. And that's at its best. At its worst, DEI is insulting and infantilizing to "marginalized communities."