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All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

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Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#341

Post by xmddmx »

ajju wrote: post #319
xmddmx wrote: post #294

This idea is not really new - the California Master Plan for Education essentially promised a free higher education to everyone in California. In 1960. [1] As these things go, the plan was eroded over time, with the (in)famous Proposition 13 of 1978 dealing a big blow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"?

What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on.

In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#342

Post by l33t233372 »

billfor wrote: post #256
version_five wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you looking for? Do you think the post shouldn't have been on here at all? Or if it's here do you think discussion should be limited to a certain perspective or a certain axis? Admitting a political story inherently admits political opinions. What would "doing better" look like?

He probably wants hacker news to look like it did 10 years ago when the topics were mostly technical. Maybe time to rename “hackers”…

I don’t mind it just being “better reddit with a technical slant”

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#343

Post by ribosometronome »

troupe wrote: post #243
slashdev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from. Were it not for slavery, again as abhorrent as it was, they'd be a lot worse off tod…

It is also easy to forget that the suppliers of slaves were African nations that practiced slavery themselves. They found the Europeans to be great customers for their slaves. So descendants of the Ashanti and others benefited from the selling of slaves. If we really want to look at reparations, we probably need some way to determine what percentage each person benefited from slavery and what percentage they suffered…

Easily forgotten? It's brought up in just about every discussion on the subject, including this one, already, by the person you were replying to agree with.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#344

Post by tyg13 »

tomcam wrote: post #334
pessimizer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity. The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were…

One of the basic principles in Western law, stretching back 700 years or so, is that prosecuting people not involved in a crime is unacceptable. The slaves and the enslaved are long dead. No one has legally owned slaves for 150+ years. How do you apportion the taxes? Do new immigrants owe the same as people here generations? Do the descendants of Irish immigrants owe the same as descendants of slave owners? What abou…

You're missing the point. No one is being "punished" for their ancestors having owned slaves. The idea is to assist people whose ancestors were exploited, legally and systemically.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#345

Post by smogcutter »

slashdev wrote: post #182
jonathanlb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory polic…

> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of…

> Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.

Because…

> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery.

Parent made the case very plain.

Try a thought experiment: your ancestors were enslaved in America. After emancipation, every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence.

The question is, what would you want done? Do the answers “well that’s all in the past” or “how about these other people though” satisfy? It’s worth thinking about. Personally I do not know what my own answer would be, other than that I would almost certainly be angry and distrustful.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#346

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwaway72762 wrote: post #311
johnnyanmac wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This site doesn't limit posts to only tech. The social culture in this site simply makes technical posts more likely to hit the front page. I'm not surprised techies are inherently interested in some socio-political stuff. Especially a topic like education where they may feel it should be an egalitarian endeavor (the interpretation of "egalitarian" inevitably causes conflicts, of course). >any mention of certain citi…

There is something wrong with it. I think about it information theoretically. Oversimplifying, the information content of something is how unpredictable it is in a given channel. On HN, in 2023, the information content of yet another comment ranting about some given city or state or group of people is basically zero. Everyone has seen those comments a thousand times recently and it adds nothing to the discussion.

I think about it more pragmatically. If we removed a post because we were afraid of an effortless comment, we'd have no posts.

I think the post itself is worth noting and is interesting. It has room for, how you put it, unpredictable responses. I can't control who or what comments on it, only who to engage with or flag. In that regard, it sounds like a moderation problem more than a content problem to me (Maybe a user problem, but I'm assuming that banning 10 specific users doesn't solve the problem). And I feel you're offering a content solution to a moderation problem, which simply doesn't align.

The real question to ask is: is the moderation inadequate? How do we fix it? I feel like asking to ban these posts is giving up to the trolls and provocateurs rather than fixing the underlying problem.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#347

Post by ericd »

torstenvl wrote: post #24
megaman821 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All school lunches and breakfasts should be free. It is abhorrent that any child in a country as rich as the United States should go hungry at school.

As a taxpayer who funds public schools, I find it acceptable to subsidize the food of those who are struggling, but I do not have any desire to subsidize the ruling elite (who, in many cases, intentionally keep working class pay low). They can pay for their own children's food.

The rich will pay far more into the program for free lunches that include their kids than their kids will receive back. And it'll probably make the program more efficient, since there won't be a pointless bureaucracy devoted to making sure there's no one getting free lunches who doesn't deserve those low-quality free lunches (the horror).

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#348

Post by wrs »

tyg13 wrote: post #344
tomcam wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the basic principles in Western law, stretching back 700 years or so, is that prosecuting people not involved in a crime is unacceptable. The slaves and the enslaved are long dead. No one has legally owned slaves for 150+ years. How do you apportion the taxes? Do new immigrants owe the same as people here generations? Do the descendants of Irish immigrants owe the same as descendants of slave owners? What abou…

You're missing the point. No one is being "punished" for their ancestors having owned slaves. The idea is to assist people whose ancestors were exploited, legally and systemically.

It may help to think of it as assistance for victims of a natural disaster, which seems pretty universally acceptable. The disaster being a very messed up society. Or as something like the Marshall Plan that helped restore Europe after, again, society’s global screwup.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#349

Post by ericd »

brightlancer wrote: post #65
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it acceptable to subsidize the food of those who are struggling, but I do not have any desire to subsidize the food of those who keep my pay low. Doesn't the means-testing bureaucracy frequently outweigh any potential savings? Food is cheap. Bureaucrats are not.

> Doesn't the means-testing bureaucracy frequently outweigh any potential savings? Maybe. Don't assume yes.

The rich are going to be paying the majority of the taxes that fund this. Is it unacceptable that their children be allowed to get a small fraction of the food their parents paid for?

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#350

Post by tyrfing »

brightlancer wrote: post #30

What is the legal status of foster kids with regard to general financial aid? Is their parents' income considered to be $0? Does the government want the parents' income information? (This used to be the norm for non-custodial and estranged parents.) It feels great to say "California's most vulnerable young people can take agency over their lives by seeking higher education," but how much is this changing? And since w…

0 EFC. No info on parents required (FAFSA) and asset information can also be skipped. Anything past community college won't necessarily be covered, though.

About 61% of foster youth in California graduate high school on time. Past 18 things turn into a messy patchwork of semi support, simply successfully transitioning to a point with a high school diploma, a job, and stable housing is a success story. Many are homeless at points, and living on the street is the backup plan if anything goes wrong. (Note: non-CA experience, but Google shows a similar alphabet soup in CA.)

NFYI says about 3-4% of foster youth graduate with a 4 year degree.

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