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Comment by psds2 | Hacker News Reader

The part of the article that mentioned vertical stratification to avoid horizontal stratification hit a chord with me. I personally come from a family of great means but due to unique circumstances spent much of my childhood living in low income areas and having friends whose parents worked fast food jobs. I think it's the best thing that ever happened to me and I think we would have a better society if more people had close interactions with people going through a different experience than themselves.

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That part jumped out at me, too.

> “There were wealthier people on the upper floors,” says Dragonas, “people who had just arrived from the countryside further down and poor students in the basement. That sort of vertical stratification inside a five-story building helped Athens to avoid horizontal stratification — there weren’t really neighborhoods that were only rich or only poor.

In the US before Brown v. Board, many cities were similarly integrated along racial and economic lines. It wasn't necessarily integrated within individual apartment buildings, but Blacks and whites would live in the same neighborhoods. When Brown v. Board mandated that schools integrate, racist whites, unwilling to let their children go to the same schools as Black children, fled to the suburbs, taking with them their disproportionate share of wealth and leaving behind impoverished Black ghettoes. Any Black families with the means soon made their own escape, and the downward spiral continued.

In many states, the vast majority of school funding comes from property taxes. So schools in wealthy neighborhoods are better funded than schools in poor neighborhoods, and this guarantees homes in wealthy school districts maintain their value since everyone wants their kids in those schools.

Here in Ohio, the state Supreme Court ruled that the system of public school funding relying on property taxes is unconstitutional over a decade ago, but nothing has changed.

I agree with you that economic segregation is huge societal ill. Studies show that poor folks are vastly better off when they live in economically diverse areas.

>In many states, the vast majority of school funding comes from property taxes. So schools in wealthy neighborhoods are better funded than schools in poor neighborhoods, and this guarantees homes in wealthy school districts maintain their value since everyone wants their kids in those schools.

In the US, school funding is (on average) progressive because federal and state funding more than offsets any local inequalities. See https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-f...

In the United States teachers school supplies, equipment for band, gear for sports and other items that contribute directly to the quality of a students education and experience are funded by bake sales, booster clubs and other sources of funding that was not at all accounted for in the article you linked or argument you make. At some schools these programs bring in six figure $ from kids reselling boutique cupcakes their mom bought, probably taking a $2 loss on each. Other schools can barely manage to raise $200 at a bake sale.

Do you know of any systematic figures on such things?

A six-figure bake sale (if I grant that it happened) is probably 1% of the school's budget (at a school of 1000 in CA, or 500 in NY). I always thought such things existed more as social occasions for parents to get to know teachers and v-v, in a more co-operative context than parent-teacher evenings.

Here is an article I found by The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/11/pta-fu...

"PTA at a well-off school might raise a million dollars or more to pay for additional teachers’ salaries, band or orchestra instruments, a new library, iPads for classrooms, field trips, or other initiatives."

"I later learned that most of the shiny extras (and even some full-time aides and specialty subject teachers) at the other schools were funded by PTAs with budgets in the six and seven figures. Our school’s PTA had less than a thousand dollars in the bank."

Thanks. If I was going to pick the location for the craziest such local contrast, I would for sure pick NYC.

But it would be interesting to know if there are more systematic figures anywhere, that apply to cities not containing Wall Street.

The Center For American Progress released a 2017 study[1] based on fiscal 2013-2014 data. The top 50 richest PTAs are listed in Appendix I.

[1] https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2017/04/180...

Thanks! So for these top-50 schools, it comes out to about 10% extra budget. And there are about 100_000 public schools in the USA.

Yes. It exacerbates the inequality because most of the top-50 richest PTA schools can afford extras that boost student engagement or provide in-class assistance via teaching assistants thus lowering the student:teacher ratio.

When a PTA can afford to pay for extras that the school doesn't or can't (e.g. extra art & music teachers, computer labs, playground monitors, etc.), a student's quality of life at such public schools is generally objectively better compared to students at public schools without the extra budget. The year-over-year budget boosts are profound.

Yes this is true. But it doesn't seem that big to me: 10% extra budget isn't nothing, but it's at a few schools which are competing with private schools, which (I think) charge more like 2-3 times as much.

And this is the top fraction of 1% of public schools. The merely top-20% schools, nice suburbs far away from wall street, they raise a fraction of this. I don't think it can explain very much of what's different there compared to the bottom-20% schools across town.

That doesn’t say anything about a Uber style bake sale lose money on every order scheme. PTAs accept donations.

I agree with your overall premise, there was no need to make up a story around it.

This was hyperbole. I don't think I made anything up, I only exaggerated the concept of buying commercially produced muffins to be resold for 0 revenue to the purchaser.

A more grounded example of this behavior is well off parents buying their child's quota of items that are meant to be sold door to door out of a catalog to raise money. I don't know the name of this type of fundraising but this is a behavior I have witnessed many times. Parents buying overpriced crap out of a catalog so that their kid gets the extra credit and other perks offered by the school in exchange for this.

>band, gear for sports and other items that contribute directly to the quality of a students education and experience

You don't fiddle your way out of generations of poverty.

Parents like to see their kids do extracurricular activities but technical skills (math, also physics) and communication skills (English) are what people need to succeed in life if they are coming from a background lacking in material wealth. When you don't have a lot of opportunities coming your way you need to be able to make good on the ones you do get.

Children do not thrive in stale, lifeless institutions that treat them like machines to be programmed with knowledge. They require opportunities for creativity, play, exploration, and also nutritious food and exercise.

Miserable, sickly children do not grow into intelligent, resilient, persistent adults who can claw their way out of poverty.

True, but there are cheap ways to get the play, exploration and exercise needed. Nutrition is overall cheap as well, but it requires time and effort that might not be available.

Hmm... Asian children educated in such schools seem to thrive just fine.

I didn't believe you so I looked up estimated suicide rates per 100,000 per country from the WHO[1].

Turns out my intuition was incorrect based solely on estimated suicide data: The US has an estimated suicide rate for kids between 10-19 of 12.5 per 100K, while most other Asian country have lower estimated suicide rates (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, etc), except for India which has the 4th highest estimated suicide rate for 10-19 year olds of 23.1 per 100K.

Although I'd still argue (weakly) that most Asian children aren't exactly thriving based on anecdotal evidence, and perhaps all that the estimated suicide rates indicate are that Asian children can grind through their respective education systems. However, I can't think of any other readily available figures that could help make my case so I am checking my gut intuition at the door.

[1] https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDE5YEARAGEGRO...

There was a pretty good line about this in the John Adams dramatization from HBO:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

(No idea what this website is, it was the first search result I found that had the quotation: https://livingforimprovement.com/two-powerful-life-lessons-f...)

Go look at the schools in poor Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Last year, Columbus City Schools cancelled classes several days because it was too hot. If you look at teachers' salaries, the city school districts pay significantly less than the surrounding suburbs, while having higher student/teacher ratios and a disproportionate number of students with Individualized Education Plans, that are English-learners, or that have other unique challenges to overcome. Standardized testing shows these schools, as one migh expect, have far poorer learning outcomes for their students, as well.

I can't tell you why your numbers appear to show otherwise, but anyone can easily verify that there is an enormous disparity between the quality of schools attended by residents of poor--often mostly Black--school districts and that attended by residents of wealthier--typically whiter--school districts.

It could be private funding that makes up the difference. Or that money is spent elsewhere (maybe more counseling, meals, etc)

Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data, assuming the data exists ave is accurate (I didn’t check).

Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data

Data can easily be used to lie or conceal, and if the observed conditions are clearly inferior, then the data is qualitatively inaccurate and/or incomplete.

Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on?

In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here.

Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While I'm sure there are anecdotes I'm dubious this could add up to enough.

I thought that in fact teacher salaries were higher in tough schools (and that, when they got sick of it, teachers would take a pay cut to teach in a nice suburb instead) but this was from conversations, and looking for data, it does look like average salaries are higher in rich areas (although for more senior teachers), and class sizes a little smaller, although I haven't dug very deep.

I agree it's a worth exploring. Just spitballing, part of it may be the cost of maintaining old buildings, particularly when changing demographics lead to over-capacity in some neighborhoods and under-capacity in others. It may also stem from financial mismanagement. There is generally less parental engagement, since poor families have more pressing concerns, so it's easier for waste or fraud to go unchecked. I don't know, none of these explanations are particularly convincing.

A lot of schools use teachers aides to support kids with special needs, like Chicago has 12k teachers, 4k special ed classroom assistants, and 3.7k special ed teachers. So like the top line teacher to student ratio may be similar to a suburban school, but I doubt that the suburban schools have that high of a ratio of special ed support staff and teachers.

https://cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Employ...

Thanks. Those are huge numbers, 40% of teaching staff who (it seems) don't count as teachers. Presumably these totals include richer & poorer parts of the city, and if it's skewed then the proportion may be even higher in the poorer bits? (Or will all the richer bits be outside Chicago school district?)

> You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning.

Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer. How many US states need air conditioning in schools? Honest question as an outsider who's never lived in an apartment with AC.

> Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer.

A very substantial share of schools either have a year round schedule or (especially for secondary schools) offer a summer session if main instruction is on a traditional schedule.

My anecdote is from Columbus, Ohio, so I'd say a lot of states do considering Columbus' latitude.

Having grown up in Cleveland and having spent plenty of time in Detroit, it is true that the school systems are in very bad condition. However, quite shockingly, they spend more per student than the nicer suburban school systems.

I don't know why this is, or how it is explained, if anyone knows I'd be all ears. It does seem like teachers get paid more in the suburbs, so that's not the reason. If I remember correctly, I saw some data suggesting that administration and building expenses are much higher, but it's hard to imagine they are getting their money's worth given the current state of things.

Ohio is probably doing nothing about it because their state Supreme Court decision contradicts the national Supreme Court decision in San Antonio vs Rodriguez. I'm no legal scholar, but I think this is right up there with Dred Scott and Citizens United for worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Independent_School...

I believe the Ohio ruling was based on Ohio's own state constitution.

Which is overruled by the United States Constitution.

White flight wasn't only because of fear of blacks. That was an issue, but suburbs were in style and offered other benefits. Most people left for other reasons if they could. This is that couldn't afford to leave were poor. Often enough they were black as well.

Remember even a tiny minority acting in a bad direction can make the whole that way. Don't descend too far into racism to explain a complex situation.

These are certainly multi-factor situations, as you say, but white flight isn't the only race-related contributor to deteriorating home prices in predominantly non-white neighborhoods.

For example, the impact of federal policies denying mortgage loans in non-white neighborhoods in the 1930s (aka redlining) are still detectable today. If your pool of buyers is lower (because of the lack of availability of a loan program) its reasonable to expect the prices would represent that, and if your prices are growing more slowly that non-redlined neighborhoods, its reasonable to expect prospective buyers could be concerned about investing in those homes.

We don't have to meander too far from the facts to see this as racism (assuming we take racism to mean the promotion of white dominance using institutional power).

https://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

True, but that doesn't mean it was racism that kept individual people out.

Some of the first zoning in the US was race-based.

No, that's simply false. White flight was about racism. Period. And it was not "a tiny minority acting in a bad direction," it was one of many ways Blacks were systematically oppressed at the time, see, e.g., red-lining, employment descrimination, and discriminatory policing. (To be clear, except traditional red-lining, all of this still happends.) White opposition to school integration was so mainstream, presidential candidate Joe Biden vocally opposed busing in the 1970's when he was a Deleware senator. You may remember Kamala Harris pointing this out in a Democratic primary debate. In Boston, white residents rioted in opposition to school desegregation.

For more evidence that white flight was motivated by racism and not something more innocuous, look at the story school enrollment numbers tell:

> Upon desegregation in 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, the Clifton Park Junior High School had 2,023 white students and 34 black students; ten years later, it had twelve white students and 2,037 black students. In northwest Baltimore, Garrison Junior High School's student body declined from 2,504 whites and twelve blacks to 297 whites and 1,263 blacks in that period.[1]

Now look at this chart of Columbus City Schools enrollment over the past 100 years.[2] It looks like a church steeple with the peak at 1971. In the nine years leading up to 1971, enrollment increased 19%. In the nine years following 1971, enrollment fell 34%. What happened?

In 1972, the CCS school board adopted a pledge stating, "It shall be the goal and policy of the Columbus Public Schools to prepare every student for life in an integrated society by giving each student the opportunity of integrated educational experiences." In 1974, the board approved a program to transport students in a voluntary racial balance plan. In 1975, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued the school district, demanding desegregation. Finally, in 1979, the district implemented a busing plan to desegregate its schools after the district court ruled against it.[3] White families in the 1970's saw change coming and fled to the suburbs in response.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Desegregation_of_...

[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qvT_UF_mZdyqjfDlCdMy...

[3] Getting Around Brown details the entire history of school segregation in Columbus, including the events cited in this paragraph. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxH84YBTnvm3dmhNM0ZqMHlCbDg...

A tiny minority combined with many who have better things to do than care is enough to be explain that. Fear of racism in others is more powerful than the reality of racism.

The current system zoning still reinforces racial and socioeconomic division. Wealthy neighborhoods keep out less wealthy people by only allowing certain types of housing (more expensive housing).

This is false. Redlining and racist covenants predate Brown by decades.

Yes, there was segregation before Brown. But it was not so pervasive and near-universal in the way it became after. There were many places where whites and Blacks did live in the same areas. These places may have been segregated, but it was on the scale of city blocks or streets. You did not have large urban ghettoes in virtually every city of any size like you do today.

Of course Brown was not bad, it was just not enough, and we still have to finish what Brown started. A big part of the problem is that the Supreme Court undermined the force of Brown in subsequent rulings instead of following through.

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