Research finds no gender bias in academic science • Hacker News Board

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#91

Post by 2devnull » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #58

2devnull wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income isn’t perfect but it’s used for a reason. Think about the problems inherent in defining “wealth”. It’s too squishy a concept to use for policy reasons, or else they would. Is somebody who makes seven figures but spends it all on food, entertainment and travel really poor? No.

Except wealth is used for lots of policy. For example, financial aid at schools attempts to use wealth. Which is why they take into account equity in your home. And if you have ten million in a trust and no income — are you poor?

I’m saying it’s not useful in policy as measurement of poverty. Poverty is and forever will be defined by income. Wealth is used in policy like everything else, yes of course. Tax policy is a great example. Is there anything that tax policy doesn’t have loopholes and special provisions for? I’d argue that wealthy people benefit from all that. Poor people benefit from clear and effective policies that use simpler, less game-able constructs. Getting into the business of trying to define nebulous hard to define constructs like wealth will benefit those with greater resources, always.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#92

Post by kenjackson » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #77

kenjackson wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it’s all people care about. But buy-in to policy will be tougher if it looks like you always take on neutral policies only when it helps certain groups.

If you aren't saying it, I will. Most political discussions I see, especially in America seem to mostly care about optics.

Can you give an example?

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#93

Post by kenjackson » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #83

eru wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of legal reasons?

The property's transfer or sale may be prohibited by the terms of inheritance. IANAL and am mostly familiar with this type of situation from rom-coms about down-on-their-luck dukes who live in crumbling, unsellable castles, so I'm not sure if that scenario truly exists in law or if it's just a handy conceit.

I prefer the rule where you must spend $30 million dollars in 30 days, but have no trace of the money left — yet still have received fair value for your spending — in order to get the inheritance.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#94

Post by Loquebantur » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #43

onos wrote: post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

This comment is not to agree or disagree with your comment, but to informally provide an interesting finding. Economies are more or less urban regions surrounded by rural areas with low population density. So, Nashville, DFW, Denver, etc. are regional economies. I have found it interesting in recent research to find that the level of disparity in health inequity (called Social Determinants of Health, one of which is…

A correlation between ethnic groups and economic disparity is not indicative of causation, much less of what the cause might be?

People having problems with even simple statistics definitely is a cause for racism on the other hand.

I find economists often to be surprisingly bad at math.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#95

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

letrowekwel wrote: post #9

onos wrote: post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism an…

[deleted]

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#96

Post by Loquebantur » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #45

NalNezumi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

This federal 10%, along with state level funding, is typically used to level the funding across the districts. The equalization of per student spending in school districts across the country has largely already happened, with little to show for it in terms of improvement of low performing schools. Rich districts do have more local school funding than poor districts, but this difference is made up with state and feder…

Kids don't actually learn much curriculum content (as opposed to social behavior) when at school. They do that when at home.

Poor kids' homes aren't conducive to learning. They lack the necessary materials, (undisturbed) space and time. Necessary social support for content learning is often absent.

Wondering about why money given to schools (used for the most part for administrative nonsense presumably) doesn't change outcomes much consequently appears to show a (class based?) detachment from respective realities?

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#97

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

enkid wrote: post #63

eru wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See eg https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... > This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality…

This guys argument is based on a meta-analysis which has nothing at all to do with the argument he is making. The meta analysis in question ( https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf ) is talking about how different research techniques measure data in different ways and therefore can't be easily compared. He then takes a look at this data, determines that it means interventions don't work very well (he doesn't…

The specific quote given, however, is not from your link but from Pathways to Inequality: Between-District Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Expenditures[0].

>From this table, we can see that on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively.

That being the case it is possible that GP simply means to bring that one fact, that is, that minorities have more funding yet still do not achieve the same academic results (aside from asians), rather than as an endorsement of the rest of the article. In any event it is a point worth considering regardless of GP's intention.

[0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#98

Post by dolni » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #35

NalNezumi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) the…

I was surprised to hear that failing, urban schools get substantially more money than their suburban counterparts. But it appears to be true where I live.

Check out https://oese.ed.gov/ppe/.

I live near a school district that is well-known for high quality education. The urban district nearby has 20% higher per-pupil spending and the quality of education is MUCH lower.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#99

Post by vlovich123 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

George83728 wrote: post #85

vlovich123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) the…

> To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools. The true rich will send their kids away to another state, or even another country, if that's what it takes to get their kids into a good school. To stop this and force all the rich kids into public schools you'd have to ban all private schools, not just in the state, not just in every state, but in every single countr…

"Rich" isn't a binary thing though. The wealth population drops off rather quickly. People with a net worth of ~$1-10M are unlikely to be sending their kids away I think. It also doesn't matter so much because their taxes would still be paying for the education of everyone who's not doing this and the sending away is an extra tax they choose to pay.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#100

Post by vlovich123 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

charrondev wrote: post #74

vlovich123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) the…

Is there a part of the world you could point to that banned private schools altogether and saw better aggregate outcomes? Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of li…

If the public schools are good, the rich send to private schools for the exclusionary aspect more than for education outcomes so it doesn't really matter. I mean it matters in the sense that less talented people take up the spots for talented people, but not in terms of generating talent out of the general populace.

> Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high).

But that's the point. If the funding is uniform based on number of pupils, in fact affluent areas will have worse education because they'll have fewer students. The thing that's hard to fight is "funding drives" to buy things for the school. That's the other thing affluent areas do on top of having a higher baseline of funding due to property taxes.

> This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools.

That is correct. Ontario has additional funding for special education programs for those with disabilities on top of the normal funding per pupil