site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is Education Spending Progressive?

This is mostly a specific data question. Brookings Institute reports that education spending is ever so slightly higher in poor districts than non-poor districts; this paper by two Stanford Professors seems to find the same thing; the Urban Institute (with one of the same authors from the Brookings report) seems to show that on the state level funding is frequently progressive. I’m not doing full justice here to these papers, which are more nuanced and actually argue that funding to poor districts is still frequently lacking. This makes sense to me - it stands to reason if you spend basically the same on rich students and poor students the former will still do better based on all their other advantages. But I’m more wondering about the empirical claim itself because the Economic Policy Institute finds the exact opposite results. They agree using national averages school spending is a little progressive, but find that when you break things up at the district level wealthier districts receive more funding.

The funny thing here is that they’re using the same data source as the other papers: the Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics / National Center for Education Statistics 2017–2018 Local Education Agency Finance Survey. But when EPI looks at it they find:

While state revenues are a significant portion of funding, they only modestly counter the large locally based inequities. And while federal funding, by far the smallest source of revenue, is being deployed as intended (to reduce inequities), it inevitably falls short of compensating for a system grounded in highly inequitable local revenues as its principal source of funding. As such, although states provide their highest-poverty districts with $1,550 more per student than to their lowest-poverty districts, and federal sources provide their highest-poverty districts with $2,080 more per student than to their lowest-poverty districts, states and the federal government jointly compensate for only about half of the revenue gap for high-poverty districts (which receive a per-student average of $6,330 less in property tax and other local revenues). That large gap in local funding leaves the highest-poverty districts still $2,710 short per student relative to the lowest-poverty districts, reflecting the 14.1% revenue gap shown in Figure C. Even though high-poverty districts get more in federal and state dollars, they get so much less in property taxes that it still puts them in the negative category overall.

And when the Stanford guys look at it they find:

Poor spending exceeds nonpoor spending in 56 percent of districts; 63 percent of the FRPL population attend schools in these districts. Black spending exceeds white spending in 71 percent of districts; 70 percent of black students attend schools in these districts. Hispanic spending exceeds white spending in 60 percent of districts; 61 percent of Hispanic students attend schools in these districts. Overall, larger districts (by enrollment) also tend to be those that spend more on disadvantaged students; therefore, more disadvantaged students are concentrated in districts with greater inequality.

What gives? Am I misunderstanding and they’re actually measuring different things that cause their results to be different?

Does it even matter? Every bit of information I've looked at in terms of spending vs. academic achievement shows basically no correlation, and sometimes a very weak inverse correlation. Utah, Colorado, and Iowa spend close to the lowest amount per student on education, but consistently rank in the top 10 for academic achievement. Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement. Arguments about disparate spend amounts based on property taxes beg the question.

Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement.

Differences in education funding are overwhelmingly because of teacher salaries. Teachers in poor midwestern states with some of the lowest per-capita spend might be paid like $40k, whereas an identical teacher in the NYC public school system might be paid $100k. The very highest-paid public school teachers are invariably found in rich suburbs (Greenwich, Palo Alto/SV in general, Westchester, and affluent New England in general). In part this is because teachers don't want a 90 minute commute and do want to be able to afford a home. There are also some outliers in places where it's hard to recruit teachers, like Alaska.

Education spend therefore definitionally has pretty much zero effect on outcomes, because there's no magical means by which cost-of-living based salary differentials for teachers impact student results, or even educational quality in any sense. The NYC teacher isn't rich, adjusted for cost of living they live similarly to their Iowa equivalent, they just live in a more expensive place.

I think states are large enough as units they might not be helpful, especially since spending is going to differ based on how wealthy the states are; though I glanced through state level stuff just now and found correlations between higher spending and better results, here's California and Texas. The EPI piece at least is based off the Department of Education's National Education Cost Model, which estimates dollars per pupil necessary to reach adequate test scores. I don't really grok the model but the estimated numbers aren't much higher than what's actually spent so aren't calling for radical overhaul or anything.

Sure, and the catholic school system spends like 30% of the public school system on average and gets better results than anyone.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats