Hacker News Reader

Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

Would be great to be more resources put in at the very start of the pipeline (e.g. early childhood education). It's very hard to "solve" "diversity" at the time of hiring when candidates have already had decades of disadvantage.

View on HN

Well we are shutting down the Department of Education...

Since education is a state level responsibility, why not handle it there? We don’t have a federal education ministry in Canada for instance.

Are you happy with the state and trajectory of education in Canada?

Ontario is the wealthiest, most populous and most diverse. Are you happy with education there?

Provinces handle it well enough but some better than others. The teaching curriculum did use to be less political but bringing federal politics would only make that worse. We have very diverse populations and needs from province to province. We generally rank well globally.

I am not I would imagine the federal government getting involved would only make it worse. (BC)

The goal was to ensure that there was a more balanced result of education across the country. California can afford to spend way more per child than Kentucky can, so without some sort of federal level balancing, California's children are just going to be more likely to prosper than Kentucky's. This doubly applies to funds for disabled or underdeveloped children who needs extra support from the school system to be successful. Those programs are going to be largely cut across the red states.

Canada handles this balancing problem with equalization payments between provinces. Which is well, sorta socialist, so it causes a great deal of consternation amongst certain people.

> Canada handles this balancing problem with equalization payments between provinces

So then there is a federal "department" involved in education...

From what I understand it's a lot more hands-off, it's a bucket of money that goes in (or out) of the budget that is used for education, healthcare, and other items. The province gets to decide how its used and the federal government doesn't get to withhold or dictate conditions. Unlike for example, highway funding and drinking age in the USA?

Well, for what it’s worth, Kentucky has a stronger economy than Canada and we manage to find money to spend on education. The key part is to spend your money well, not spend more.

If spending is so important why are the most expensive districts the worst. Shouldn’t that money have helped them? And yet year after year, they remain the worst despite $20k+ per student.

But if the name of the game is efficient spending why are we replicating much of the same work in 50 states instead of just once federally?

That would make far more sense if this was only about money.

Libertarians and conservatives don't want to acknowledge efficiencies of scale in certain areas because it's not about efficient spending.

The question is how much administration does the education system really need? Many of the admin tasks are local in nature so I’m doubtful that moving it across the country will get good results.

Good question. If the US is truly facing a "Sputnik moment" with regards to China nd AI, the US should bring back something like the "National Defense Education Act" (1958) which was aimed at bolstering American competitiveness in science and technology.

Well I suppose we should start hiring in science and technology then and not just stamp around saying how important it is to the future. All we have are layoffs right now. The signal the industry sends to would-be majors is to stay away.

we try in mississippi but the conservatives slowly take away funding piece by piece because they don't want to educate black people, because then they wouldn't be able to control them.

Which spending and headcount for has increased since its inception, with no actual improvement in education (per Cato Institute). God forbid some accountability and no more wasting of tax dollars.

I like this. DEI efforts and investments should be at least as much about planting the right seeds as it is about tailoring the current “harvest”.

It's especially a joke when BigCo hires a larger percentage than what the pipeline supplies, it necessarily drops the diversity at smaller companies.

The fair way is to do so at all levels of the pipeline because it turns out people can overcome their past if given the support and resources to do so. But it’s far easier and cheaper to invest early on. All that said, real structural racism and sexism and other prejudices continues to exist, and so the pipeline will always be a problem.

But a company like Google, which makes obscene profits every quarter, should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice, because if whole categories of people are unprepared to work at Google because of societal failures, that’s huge numbers of potentially fantastic employees Google is missing out on.

Didn't they find out in Sweden that, given the opportunity, women were not as interested in STEM as they were in other fields?

> should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice

Google is a big company that can do a lot of things, but I wouldn't expect them to solve societal problems that plenty of other very profitable companies are making almost no effort in.

The models Google is developing may end up being the most impactful innovation in learning since the printing press.

I think to say that it's very hard to solve it underestimates the development of skills that can be done for adults. I think it's merely hard.

We have programs like Head Start, school meals, etc. but they’re currently being defunded.

I couldn't agree more - I'm not sure why there is no focus on addressing gaps sooner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com