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Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#151

Post by zepto »

alexgmcm wrote: post #81
slibhb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe? I don't think Europe is "worse" than the US. I think Europe is optimized for the poor whereas the US is optimized for the middle class and above. There are good arguments for both of these situations. In…

> why is there substantially less innovation in Europe? I know people who started start-ups and spun out side projects here in Europe (both the UK and the continent). One thing I noticed was that when it came time to raise money almost of all of them ended up needing American investment. We don't have anywhere near as much VC capital here in Europe and the banks are incredibly conservative. Plus depending on the coun…

> I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term

I think that’s a terrible term for it unless you think that America is somehow responsible for preventing Europe from developing its own tech industries.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#152

Post by mc32 »

gumby wrote: post #133
mc32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has regulation changed appreciably the last two or three decades resulting in less drive for innovation?

I don't think so; in particular I believe the strength of the European economy in the late 90s was merely hysteresis from the growth and investments of the 70s and 80s. There is a certain structural "stiffness" which is a mix of regulation and culture but I don't believe it changed much. There was a big war in the middle of the 20th century that you might have heard of :-) and I feel like it upended things; poor coun…

Thanks for the perspective; there might be something to what you said.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#153

Post by xyzzyz »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #146
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while also chronically underfunding schools Schools are not underfunded in the U.S., they waste money. Big difference.

Funding in U.S. schools is super unequal. Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low. That means low funding for the local school, which lowers the quality of education for students, which makes it harder for the students to get out of poverty, which keeps the district's poverty level high. It's a self reinforcing cycle,…

This might have been true at some point in the past, but it is very much false now, and has been false for at least a decade or two. If local property tax revenues are low, the shortfall is made up for with state and federal funds. Just look at the data: worst performing urban schools often have more funding than better performing ones in rural areas or in smaller towns. If you don’t believe me, just show me a few examples, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with, if the pattern is as strong and casually important as you suggest it is.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#154

Post by iammisc »

triceratops wrote: post #139
iammisc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental Policy (EPA). Family policy (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc via the Supreme Court). Healthcare (Obamacare). Education (no child left behind, the dept of education). Higher education (federal backed guarantees). We can go on...

> Family policy (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc via the Supreme Court). If it's via the Supreme Court, can you really blame "Democrats"? The Supreme Court upheld gay marriage on the basis of equal rights to all. States can't pass laws that violate the US constitution.

You're not wrong, but the democrats championed gay marriage as well. I don't see how you can deny that.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#155

Post by bluGill »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #146
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while also chronically underfunding schools Schools are not underfunded in the U.S., they waste money. Big difference.

Funding in U.S. schools is super unequal. Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low. That means low funding for the local school, which lowers the quality of education for students, which makes it harder for the students to get out of poverty, which keeps the district's poverty level high. It's a self reinforcing cycle,…

Maybe, but I went to one of the worst funded schools in my state (MN at the time) and got a great education. We were a rural area with only a small tax base, but everyone cared that we got a good education and so the money was carefully spent to give us a good education with the limited money. In fact as a kid I commented that it didn't seem like we had poor funding as we had a lot of activities and great education. Then it was explained that the historical mining areas of the state had a much better tax base, as did the inner city schools (they got the taxes from expensive downtown properties), and even suburban districts had industrial areas to tax.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#157

Post by shados »

John23832 wrote: post #7

Two parts: First, I think the ability to DO THINGS is the great equalizer at this point. Being a do-er lifts you out of poverty (or at least out of poverty's worst resting state). Being a do-er expands your network. Being a do-er prolongs your life (people with jobs/daily activities tend to live longer healthier lives). The best part about this is that technology has made it easier to become a do-er. You don't need a…

Yup. Having an education doesn't do anything (as in diplomas). Being educated does. The quality of the public schools matter a lot.

As for college... It was a differentiator, not an equalizer. When so many people have college degrees, they're just an expectation and all of a sudden you raised the bar, so people who don't have them are even more screwed.

The analogy I always like is MMORPG expansions/level cap raise. Every time the level cap raises, new players to the game take that much longer to catch up. The developers then need to add a bunch of "catch up" mechanics to artificially close the gap.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#158

Post by xyzzyz »

harimau777 wrote: post #135
kungito wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the US has to split into separate countries and maybe adopt a system like EU. Everything in the us gets so generalized no one has any agency over it except companies with enough money to push a narrative across 300 mil people. Either that or the way you think about US has to change. I find it hard to believe every state does things the same way but still you say "US" has a problem and not Georgia or Calif…

I'm not sure how that would work without allowing the individual states to act like separate countries. E.g. by being able to put tariffs on other states, sue them for their externalities, place restrictions on people who don't live and work in the state, etc. At that point, I'm not sure what you gain by not being completely separate countries.

What you could do is to enumerate powers of the federal government, and one of those powers would be to “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”, with the understanding among the authors of the document that “regulating commerce” means regulating trade and tariffs, so that nobody then can misinterpret it as giving the federal power to regulate anything they want by arguing it affects interstate commerce.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#159

Post by WalterBright »

John23832 wrote: post #7

Two parts: First, I think the ability to DO THINGS is the great equalizer at this point. Being a do-er lifts you out of poverty (or at least out of poverty's worst resting state). Being a do-er expands your network. Being a do-er prolongs your life (people with jobs/daily activities tend to live longer healthier lives). The best part about this is that technology has made it easier to become a do-er. You don't need a…

> chronically underfunding schools

In Washington State, for decades there was a big push to "fully fund" the schools. They finally got their way a couple years back, i.e. just about everything they wanted.

There has been zero improvement in results.

There has been no further mention of "fully funding" the schools in the press since, but the demands for more and more money for the schools have not abated at all.

Edit: the fully funding was in place in 2018

https://www.washingtonea.org/ourvoice/mccleary-school-fundin...

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#160

Post by treis »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #146
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while also chronically underfunding schools Schools are not underfunded in the U.S., they waste money. Big difference.

Funding in U.S. schools is super unequal. Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low. That means low funding for the local school, which lowers the quality of education for students, which makes it harder for the students to get out of poverty, which keeps the district's poverty level high. It's a self reinforcing cycle,…

>Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low

This is a common myth but it's not backed up by the numbers. Poverty is (mostly) concentrated in inner cities and those inner cities typically contain large office builds which pay lots of real estate taxes but send no kids to schools. If you look around different states the highest per pupil spending is by far in the cities. As an example, Atlanta public schools spends $15k per pupil while the surrounding suburban counties are 8-10k per pupil.

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