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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that also, generally speaking, anyone who was legally discriminated against probably lives in a jurisdiction performing poorly in test scores, since all schooling in the US are based on geographic districts funded by local property tax, and due to historic discrimination the formerly discriminated groups also live in areas with lower housing wealth. (A lot of people also moved out of districts with large minority populations when integration was mandated, taking their taxes and wealth with them.)

Want to make a bunch of people very angry? Propose a metropolitan-area wide school district.

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>since all schooling in the US are based on geographic districts funded by local property tax

Not true at all. There are many places like California where School funds are distributed Statewide. The results are relatively predictable. California passed the Serrano decisions in the early '70s mandating local taxes be spent Statewide on schools. This was followed immediately by a prop 13 where residents decided that if their money doesn't go to Local Schools they won't pay. As a result California dropped from top five in the nation in school funding to the bottom five.

https://edsource.org/2022/californias-prop-13s-unjust-legacy...

https://publicadvocates.org/our-work/education/access-qualit...

> Want to make a bunch of people very angry? Propose a metropolitan-area wide school district.

By that you mean that kids can not choose their school on the US?

No they can't. That's why Republicans are a big proponent of school vouchers so that parents can choose which school a child can go to, but Democrats say that is racist.

Correct. If you live in [poor high-percentage African-American town in Alabama] you cannot choose to go to high school in [wealthy mostly-white town in Massachusetts].

(Setting aside private schools...)

The commute distance would put a hamper on it even for private schools.

But you can move to a better school district but that requires money.

There are however many areas with decent schools and decent prices which could be a destination. And some minority families do move there.

Some jurisdictions jail parents who send their children to neighboring better districts. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/for-some-parents-s...

> areas with lower housing wealth.

So, in other words, lower income.

Not quite, because you can be house-poor due to luck with owning, and also owning a ‘bad’ house in, say, New York City would give you a high paper net worth when comparing to the entire country.

That’s why I mentioned income, not net worth.

There are also large differences in salaries and income across the country due to variance in cost of living. Poor in New York may be a decent wage in Gary or Biloxi.

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