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Comment by jyounker | Hacker News Reader

I'm assuming you are not familiar with this study: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/chk_aer_mto_04...

It shows that if a poor family moves from a poorer school district to a richer school district, and they have children under 13, then those children are significantly more successful than children whose families remain in the poorer school district. However, after 13 there seems to be a slight negative effect.

There are other studies showing similar effedcts.

Summary: It's not genetics.

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A lot of that has to do with who your kid goes to school with. If we take equally funded schools (in WA that’s easy since education is primarily funded by the state), the results are still different: districts with richer families do better probably because they get more support at home, but even lower income students do better since they feel like they need to keep up with their classmates.

Interesting. I've the same observation in Vietnam where I grew up. Maybe this is more universal than I thought.

Heritable doesn't mean genetic. Language and money are heritable.

Technically yes, but the poster also listed “parenting” practices not having an effect so I think we all know what he means.

> Summary: It's not genetics.

No one said its genetics. They're saying its not only funding.

They said heritability. They meant genetics.

Several people have told you that's not the case; don't assume other people's intents. Heritability is absolutely not congruent to genetics.

The genetic meaning is the most common usage of the word, which is evidenced by a Google search. It’s also the most obvious meaning when referring to racial minorities.

If they didn’t mean genetic, then they really screwed up in their use of language.

that is poor evidence for a school funding effect, but yes - environment is important. i will say that this is the first time i've ever seen MTO cited as a positive example of the impact, my understanding (not very informed) was that it is considered a negative result.

i wish these analyses were pre-registered, but i recognize that is difficult to do for very long timespan studies like this

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