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Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by specialp on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:51PM (#42660684)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by seanmcdirmid on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:54PM (#42661255)
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.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by blindriver on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:37PM (#42661653)
This is the same as California.

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

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by dragonwriter on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:54PM (#42661786)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by blindriver on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:21PM (#42661989)
My mistake, I know that most of school funding came from the state but I thought it was because it was from property taxes being collected. In fact it's from state income tax and sales tax.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by inferiorhuman on Saturday January 11, 2025 @03:20AM (#42664264)
Property tax in California is a huge mess. In terms of K-12 funding there's also Prop 98 to contend with.

https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-primer-1129...

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by IcyWindows on Friday January 10, 2025 @08:28PM (#42662451)
It doesn't help when the Seattle school superintendent told parents that if they didn't like their school policies, they could leave.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by streptomycin on Saturday January 11, 2025 @01:56PM (#42668089)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by whimsicalism on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:00PM (#42661322)
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
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Loughla on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:27PM (#42662043)
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).
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by bberenberg on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:52PM (#42663150)
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?
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by ryan93 on Saturday January 11, 2025 @09:16AM (#42666014)
Places like Baltimore often have substantially more funding than many suburban districts
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by klooney on Saturday January 11, 2025 @09:20AM (#42666048)
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.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by bcrosby95 on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:50PM (#42661210)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by dmix on Saturday January 11, 2025 @07:10AM (#42665344)
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...

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by ok123456 on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:54PM (#42661785)
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."

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by wyager on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:59PM (#42661313)
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.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Loughla on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:29PM (#42662064)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by wyager on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:43PM (#42662160)
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.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by croissants on Friday January 10, 2025 @08:44PM (#42662538)
Do you have a link to this analysis? I'm curious what "condition on race" actually means.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by eapressoandcats on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:09PM (#42662954)
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...
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by wyager on Saturday January 11, 2025 @10:39AM (#42666552)
"As a percentage of GDP" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Why would we normalize this to GDP?
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by einarfd on Saturday January 11, 2025 @11:53AM (#42667108)
Because a lot of it is salaries and other employee benefits.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by bdangubic on Saturday January 11, 2025 @10:46AM (#42666601)
what would we normalize it to? not saying you are wrong in any way, just curiously wondering?
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by wyager on Saturday January 11, 2025 @05:29PM (#42669459)
There's no a priori reason you would expect student expenditures to become less effective per dollar in richer countries, except the fraction spent on labor.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by eapressoandcats on Sunday January 12, 2025 @10:39AM (#42674310)
Education is almost entirely labor and real estate. It’s a classic Baumol’s cost disease situation. Like I guess richer countries can purchase better computer labs?

So yeah, it’s probably true that the US spends more per pupil because we have a higher GDP per capita, but it’s not clear that we should expect to get a lot more out of it.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by KaiserPro on Saturday January 11, 2025 @08:43AM (#42665810)
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by polski-g on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:15PM (#42660880)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by jyounker on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:50PM (#42661222)
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.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by seanmcdirmid on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:57PM (#42661287)
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.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by tuan on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:42PM (#42663111)
Interesting. I've the same observation in Vietnam where I grew up. Maybe this is more universal than I thought.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by thfuran on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:23PM (#42661543)
Heritable doesn't mean genetic. Language and money are heritable.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by eapressoandcats on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:13PM (#42662979)
Technically yes, but the poster also listed “parenting” practices not having an effect so I think we all know what he means.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by whimsicalism on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:02PM (#42661338)
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

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by bcrosby95 on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:17PM (#42661485)
> Summary: It's not genetics.

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

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by eapressoandcats on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:13PM (#42662981)
They said heritability. They meant genetics.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Biganon on Friday January 10, 2025 @11:59PM (#42663437)
Several people have told you that's not the case; don't assume other people's intents. Heritability is absolutely not congruent to genetics.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by eapressoandcats on Saturday January 11, 2025 @02:18AM (#42663998)
The genetic meaning is the most common usage of the word, which is evidenced by a Google search. It’s also the most obvious meaning when referring to racial minorities.

If they didn’t mean genetic, then they really screwed up in their use of language.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by DragonStrength on Saturday January 11, 2025 @10:33AM (#42666507)
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?