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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

>My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.

The problem is student outcomes aren't linked to how much money and resources the school has, they're linked to how much money and resources the parents (and the network of the parents) of the children have. Networking is the primary benefit of top tier schools, and so unfairly giving a chance to those without the network is the only way for them to move up the ladder as a group.

This will necessarily displace individually who might deserve to be there more, but the problem is an intractable one due to the outsize gains of being part of that network.

I am not endorsing affirmative action, or discrimination against certain "successful" minorities, simply offering a chain of reasoning for it.

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My SO taught in public schools. One was a 'standard' public school, the other was a 'charter' school [0]. I have some second hand knowledge here.

The parents make all the difference.

Yes, poverty is a huge factor, but some parents are more in touch than others, in spite of the poverty.

At the 'standard' school, it was a mess that I won't burden the reader with. One key metric that I found interesting was that the teacher drop-out rate was ~80%. This gives an idea of the quality of the school.

At the 'charter', every single graduate has gone to college in some form. They are quite proud of this metric, as they should be. The 'charter' was richer on average, yes. But many of the kids were opting out of the 'standard' school and going to the charter. The income of those kids' parents was similar to the 'standard' school. The population of 'poor' kids that went to the 'charter' school was much less though.

[0] It's publicly funded, but still a charter. The local district is not like most. Every parent/guardian is forced to rank the schools for their child to go to. All are open for enrollment. City Bus passes are provided for every child for free in lieu of school busses. It works, but still has a lot of issues, like most places.

It would probably be more than schools. We would have to divert significant amounts of money to helping poor communities.

I think the government adopted affirmative action instead because it was a much cheaper way to placate the masses

Or what we realized was the right idea a long time ago... mixing everybody up by force. (Busing)

I believe it has been proven that as communities become more integrated, outcomes improve for all parties — and not just academically.

One Source, since people seem to disagree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/23/...

Something more academic: https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/johnson_schooldesegregat...

But the problem we realized, after trying out forced busing, was that in the long term all parents with resources would simply opt out of the public school system to avoid it.

Practically, going a long way to school on a bus every morning blows

Because schools are a reflection of the students they get. Private schools do better not because they teach any better, but because they keep out the ones that aren't there to learn and thus the teacher can actually spend their time teaching a group of kids at the same level.

Affirmative action was almost certainly the least bad solution--it broke the back of the rampant discrimination in this country, something that would have been very hard to do anywhere near as fast by other means.

The problem is that it's already produced all the benefits it's going to, now it's pure burden with no benefit.

> The problem is student outcomes aren't linked to how much money and resources the school has, they're linked to how much money and resources the parents (and the network of the parents) of the children have.

The consistent positive outcomes of disadvantaged students in KIPP Academies would suggest this is not always the case.

There is likely significant selection bias happening at KIPP schools - and all charter schools.

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

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The authors of The Charter School Dust-Up said that KIPP's admission process self-screens for students who are motivated, compliant, and come from similarly motivated, compliant and supportive families. The 2010 Mathematica Policy Research study found that KIPP schools had a "lower concentration of special education and limited English proficiency students than the public schools from which they draw".[22]

Some KIPP schools show high rates of attrition, especially for those students entering the schools with the lowest test scores. A 2008 study by SRI International found that while KIPP fifth-grade students who enter with below-average scores significantly outperform peers in public schools by the end of year one, "60 percent of students who entered fifth grade at four Bay Area KIPP schools in 2003–04 left before completing eighth grade",[23] although research on attrition at one KIPP school in Massachusetts differs.[24] The SRI report also discusses student mobility due to changing economic situations for student's families, but does not directly link this factor into student attrition. Figures for schools in all states are not readily available.

Of course KIPP selects for motivated students. But it also selects for severely disadvantaged students. So while it's true that we can't assume KIPP's results can be generalized across the entire population, we know that additional school resources works in a subset.

It is always good to make this clear. It is "how", not "how much".

The American system would benefit a great deal from a systematic reshuffle without a dime extra being spent.

A few realigned incentives here, a little more competition there, and voila... The system pulls itself closer to your goals as it iterates, rather than further down a path that appears to satisfy no one except those whose interests are entrenched.

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