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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

I looked into it. There's literally only 5 zip codes this applies to. Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, Bridgman, Berrien Springs, Stevensville.

We do like the general area so my wife is now pushing for us to take advantage of this. I'm hesitant mainly because I don't want to move in the middle of a pandemic/get our house ready to be sold right away.

Where are the large dog runs at?

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You mentioned a wife. I'm not going to presume that children are for sure in your future, but if that's something you and your wife have considered I would _strongly_ suggest you research the schools for those areas. I can comment via a previous teaching colleague that Benton Harbor was not a district you would want a child in if it could be avoided.

I don't know anything about Benton Harbor, but here in the United States being told a town has "bad schools" tends to be very highly correlated to large non-white population. I just looked it up and oh hey, Benton Harbor's population is 89% African-American.

Yeah. It’s a vicious cycle, particularly in predominantly-Republican/Southern states. There’s very, very, very little support for public education at a state level — or even nationally; I mean, our goddamn Secretary of Education is Betsy DeVos, who advocates for charter schools to a degree that is frankly sickening when the reality is that they are, on average, shit for the success of a community.

It’s gross, and has very recent racist roots. I went to high school with kids whose parents founded “white flight” private schools in my city.

It’s not that GP is racist, or something — but to deny the connection between race and public education in the US would be silly at best and malicious at worst (see, for example, Fox News/aforementioned DeVos)

"especially in republican states"...

meanwhile LA and NY public schools in black areas are among the worst in the country despite massive amounts of funding.

https://www.laweekly.com/california-is-home-to-some-of-ameri...

> A new analysis of the nation's public schools, by personal finance site WalletHub

That's a private company doing a performance on a public service? A personal finance company at that? How did they arrive at doing this analysis?

I even tried opening the linked analysis from two different IP addresses, but all I get is this message: [1]

> Oops! This IP address has been blocked due to too many requests. To unblock, please send your IP address via email to help@wallethub.com.

[1] https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/

Moving on, this is what the article says:

> The study was based on 17 metrics, including student-to-teacher ratio, dropout rates and average SAT and ACT scores. Compared with the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, California ranked 47th in reading test scores, 46th in math test scores and dead last in student-teacher ratios.

I'm very curious about those metrics. Because the three that are mentioned only give a superficial glance of what's going on. Correlation is not causation, for one. Are drop out rates or low SAT/ACT scores directly related to the quality of education? Or the poor social economic situation of the households in which children grow up?

Without follow up, I'd be very careful about drawing conclusions.

> “More resources do not always correlate with better academic performance, as our findings demonstrate,”

Of course not. Then there's also the larger debate whether academic performance alone should be the main goal of public schools? Isn't the purpose of providing an education, ensuring that the next generation grows up into stable, independent and healthy adults?

For instance, she push towards standardized testing in which private publishers such as Pearson have come to play a crucial role is something that does deserve a discussion in it's own right as well, no? [2]

[2] https://qz.com/398279/watch-john-oliver-dismantle-american-s...

I could access your [1] from wallethub, for what it's worth, and... you're better off blocked. I tried to find any sort of external link to citations but could only find this blurb at the end:

> Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Education, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Center for Education Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Education Commission of the States, U.S. News & World Report, College Board, Ballotpedia, ACT, National Governors Association, State Educational Technology Directors Association and Zendrive.

Source: Secret Order of the Forsaken Keebler elves.

>Are drop out rates or low SAT/ACT scores directly related to the quality of education?

Like what, students know the material perfectly, but drop out and lower their scores for lulz?

So, funnily enough, Michigan ranks above California on USNews's k-12 education metric, 29:37. [0] So does Texas, at 33. And Missouri. And Virginia. And Florida.

I think your stereotype of "smart liberals spending money for a good education" and "dumb hicks throwing their kids futures away for a penny" might be a liiiiitle bit off.

0: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

whats your point? are you supposed to willingly condemn your child to a bad school because of that fact?

condemn them... its got just as much of a chance to save them.

Bad schools means the student population comes from households with low incomes, and hence are less likely to have home environments preferable for schoolwork compared to home environments areas with households with high incomes. i.e. "You are the company you keep", so people try to ensure their kids are surrounded by other kids with economically secure families, in the hopes that their influence will lead to higher probabilities of success.

I'm in none of those zip codes and I've visited numerous places that were not there.

Unfortunately, I could not find the large dog run on a map. I know where it is and the signs call it out if you are there.

Different places have a different culture. It all kind of depends on what you're in to. For example, I know some people who love the Traverse City area and some others who have been there for a bit and are ready to move. That's an area worth looking at.

If you want to be close to things and like urban-ish then there is Ann Arbor. The train to Chicago goes right through town. The express ways also make it easy to get to a lot of places as fast as you can in Michigan. While it's about as urban as it gets in Michigan you can also get out of it pretty quickly into the outdoors.

Michigan has a fair amount of variety. That's why people can have such different experiences.

I visited my parents the other day. On the drive down their street I passed a couple dozen wild turkeys. While I was at their house an 8 point buck walked through the back yard. The deer there know it's safe enough that you can be outside, reading, and drinking a coffee and the deer wont run off.

It's a different pace of life where I am at. Not every place is like that.

I mean the $15k moving incentive applies only if you move to one of those 5 zip codes. It's near the bottom of www.movetomichigan.org.

I think I may have passed by a dog run sign, come to think of it. Whenever we've visited we didn't have our dogs with us, though. If we moved we would try to hunt them down though.

We live in the suburbs, not downtown, so we're not super urban. It would still be a bit of a culture shock to live there I think, as SW Michigan is significantly more rural than where we are at, but we mainly went for the nature.

You know those stories about cities emptying out and leasing prices dropping?

Thats because millions of people are moving in the middle of a pandemic, even inviting movers into their homes and driving shared uhaul trucks.

If you’re “at risk” then caveat emptor, if not then “middle of a pandemic” is not an excuse for everything.

Without saying what specifically, there are risk factors in the family.

The downside of “doing what lots of other people are doing” during a pandemic is that when the pandemic ends, which may be a few months from now if a vaccine is effective, you’ll have placed yourself at a huge disadvantage when the same forces invert. I say this as someone who lived in NYC way back during 9/11 and thought the city would never recover. It absolutely did, almost immediately, and I felt very silly for the next decade or so.

You mean for an owner or mortgage holder?

Or you got underwater and tied up with life wherever you went to?

A little bit of column A a little bit of column B?

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