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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   28981 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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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?

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

I'm sure everyone here knows this already, but - the 'other advantages' (for educational attainment) are mostly genes. Social assistance, modern food production and medicine, and universal schooling are very good at smoothing over the differences that social class and wealth caused in the past. And schools are amazing at identifying talented students, and the modern economy's somewhat good at sorting more talented students into higher incomes. And the heritability of educational attainment is pretty high (~ >2/3), so a lot of richer students just have better genes. The impact of 'shared environment' (i.e. anything related to parents) is much lower (10%). Science is hard, those numbers are probably off a bit, but they match with my experience.

Another argument some would make is 'if local voters want to spend more of their money on their childrens' education - shouldn't they be able to? must we prevent them from doing so with more taxes and redistribution?', but I think this unnecessarily argues both property rights / local control and optimal policy.

There are also clearly issues in low-income schools with teaching quality and disruptive students that hurt learning quality at least a little bit. (how much is a little bit? this would probably be non-shared environment, which is <=25%, and all randomness and idiosyncratic genetic effects also is part of non-shard environment, so there's not that much room left). But 5% more money can only increase teacher salaries by a little over 5%, and won't solve disruption.

FdB and the lesswrong embryo guy should collaborate to write an essay on the cost effectiveness of education policy vs embryo selection to improve test scores and other outcomes, I wonder how many orders of magnitude the difference would be. 2? 5?

Another argument some would make is 'if local voters want to spend more of their money on their childrens' education - shouldn't they be able to? must we prevent them from doing so with more taxes and redistribution?', but I think this unnecessarily argues both property rights / local control and optimal policy.

This was the main angle I was intending to take. I probably agree that state-level policies should provide for sufficient funds for all schools to meet some minimal standard, but I cannot see any moral case for insisting that all schools must receive the same funding above that threshold. If a wealthy community wants to build an unusually nice football stadium for their kids, I don't see the sin in that and I don't see the obligation to redistribute an exactly equal amount of funding to schools in poorer communities. I really can't relate to the egalitarian impulse to make everything equally mediocre everywhere.

I cannot see any moral case for insisting that all schools must receive the same funding above that threshold

If we lived in a society where antibiotics and clean water were restricted to the rich, and the rich and poor were much less sorted by IQ than they are, there's a strong argument that money is better spent giving poor communities basic medical care, sanitation, and nutrition than it is improving the athletic facilities at rich schools, even if the tax burden is onerous - and this'd be economically beneficial for everyone in the long term. Although that'd look less like redistribution and more like 'development', if higher taxes on the rich was the best way to accomplish it (which it might not be), I'd support that. But that's not where we are now. It is where people sort of imagine / hallucinate that we are, though, which is why I don't like making that argument

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