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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

#431

Now in a better world we'd drop a word from this sentence and make it free for all state residents. That's closer to what it used to be. Realistically this doesn't change much since it's extremely unlikely a foster kid wouldn't qualify for a full ride prior to this. The only people who really get screwed are middle class families who make too much to qualify for aid, but can't really afford to pay for school.

In Georgia, if you have and maintain a B average its free.

I don't agree its fair, though, for the blue collar folks or the people who aren't bright enough to go to college to have to subsidize it.

Or in Georgia's case, those with a gambling problem.

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

#432
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...

There is this meme that Prop 13 is responsible for everything bad in California because of course we could pay for anything if we had more money. In reality the CA budget has grown faster than inflation for decades. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...

That comparison makes no sense. At the very least you’d want to look at per capita figures.

Prop 13’s impact on the political economy, empowering comfortable boomers, is probably as bad as its impacts on the budget.

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

#433
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never seen it as something that was thought about as part of any reparation ideas.

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

#434
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand and empathize, but you also realize that college in the 60's and in the 2020's are completely different beasts no, right? The genie is out of the lamp, but we literally don't have the room to stuff it back in. CA's population has tripled in 60 years, and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). There are more students competing for university today than there were…

> CA's population has tripled in 60 years and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales. > and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). Not necessarily : see my comment below.

None of these stats grew at the rate of tuition prices.

Which happens to be the metric that really matters.

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

#435
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, if you’re looking at left or (by your own omission right) and don’t have one to share yourself I’d be thinking about the why behind your common. Would you say Equality and equity are the same?

> Would you say Equality and equity are the same? It depends on with whom I'm speaking. Even the Wikipedia page for the former is a disambiguation [1]. The historical (and international) use of the former is closer to that of egalitarianism [2]. I fail to see what is gained by redefining equality and creating the term equity when equal opportunity vs. equality of outcome has decades of scholarship behind it, to say n…

Appreciate the response!

In any conversation, inter-discplinary or not, agreeing on what a word means is important.

For me, there is a difference between equity and equality.

As you mentioned, people will hammer on the lens of the interpretation without being aware of it, or not being able to explain the core of it.

I would start with the idea of access to education and access to opportunity to apply education to uplift current and future generations.

Removing built in barriers that have been in the public education system (based off the industrial education system to keep turning out reliable and obedient factory workers by omitting certain information) is one place to start.

Still, not every baby starts at the same start line, and not everyone has the same headwinds, or tailwinds. Some argue its impossible to make everyone equal or equitable, but there are some parts of that spectrum that will never be able to to even be close to equals in average, and the conversation starts around that, and those who are in a position to more default succeed by failing upwards, and those who are not.

There's a lot of focus on breaking ceilings. I often wonder about how it looks for the average person, however that is defined to access opportunity compared to someone who is not a part of the majority, for example.

The interpretation on whether this should be made equitable for everyone, or only to a certain degree is definitely a topic of discussion.

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

#436
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...

There is this meme that Prop 13 is responsible for everything bad in California because of course we could pay for anything if we had more money. In reality the CA budget has grown faster than inflation for decades. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...

Not to forget that CA had a $100B budget surplus as recently as 2021. What did they do with all that money? Nothing.

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

#437
I'll take it, but I wish 16 continuous years of education were not required for basic life success. Germany seems to have a better system where schools teach useful job skills and paid apprenticeships help refine these. Especially for foster youth, it seems important to have some income as well as place in society as soon as possible. Provided they can even get into a college in the first place with limited opportunity to focus on academics.

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

#438
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many non-foster kids graduate high school?

The question to ask is "how many kids graduate high school vs. how many should ". Turns out the answer is interesting - about 50 years ago, the graduation rate for high school was around 50%. These days it's much higher (90% or more in some areas). Does this mean the children is learning? Perhaps. It also may represent a failure of our systems - in the past, not everyone needed a high school degree to be a functional…

> Does this mean the children is learning?

I understood that reference.

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

#439
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many non-foster kids graduate high school?

The question to ask is "how many kids graduate high school vs. how many should ". Turns out the answer is interesting - about 50 years ago, the graduation rate for high school was around 50%. These days it's much higher (90% or more in some areas). Does this mean the children is learning? Perhaps. It also may represent a failure of our systems - in the past, not everyone needed a high school degree to be a functional…

>50 years ago...50% graduation rate

cite? This seems to be saying the graduation rate was between 80 and 85% back in 1972: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-americas-rising-high-...

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

#440
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How would be paying people minimum wage to batch cook food from scratch with local produce be more expensive ? Local produce is more expensive, as is cooking from scratch[0]. Another problem is that won't scale. You can't feed millions of kids twice a day every weekday from the local farmers' market. [0] https://www.vox.com/videos/2018/3/22/17152460/healthy-eating... > how would be our Republicans friends do lunch f…

Thanks for the vox link, I can’t load it now, I’m traveling and have no bandwidth. I’m ready to change my mind once I’m reaching a wifi. In interval : how did we do it for millenniums before frozen carbs? Random: Let’s say the Roman army. Ok. They were relying on canned food a lot. ( garnum ) But for sure they were not eating frozen hotdog

>how did we do it for millenniums before frozen carbs?

We didn't. Child mortality was higher, populations were smaller, life expectancy was lower and malnutrition and starvation were more common.

Our current population size is the direct result of post-industrial farming and food production making calories easily available to the masses, and all kinds of foods accessible year-round.

But again, the problem isn't modern processed food, which can be perfectly healthy, it's an unwillingness to fund school lunches enough to provide more than cheap, empty calories.

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