On the Problems with Communication, Discourse, and Social Justice

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

So your claim is that the reduction in the achievement gap in the mid-80s was brought about as much by reducing the education of the white kids as by bettering the blacks? Is there any data behind that or is it just assumption?

Your claim, on the other hand, is that increasing class sizes and decreased per capita resources have no effect on educational outcomes? Which of these claims is less likely, exactly?

We don't have to speculate. We have data. We did the experiment.

Here's a quick summary
Looks to me like almost all the closing of the gap in the late 70s and 80s was a large gain by the blacks and possibly a slight loss by the whites, while the reopening was more of a mix in math and more loss by blacks in reading.
Certainly not as simple as anything like as much from whites doing worse.

I can guess at possible reasons, but can't really do more than that. Possibly the better off white families were willing to spend more to keep their schools up to par despite more demand. Possibly just reducing the concentration of poverty, exposing the minority kids to something beyond what they'd known made a difference even without extra funding.
Quite probably integrating neighborhoods would work even better, both by color and income/class. But that's even harder to do.

At this point it will be virtually impossible to do. Trying to de-segregate neighborhoods by income would only happen with a program akin to income scaling mortgage vouchers that also scaled depending on where you wanted to buy a house, and a guaranteed home loan with no other qualification than a SS number. Anything short of that wont get you there.

[LazarX]

Sissyl wrote:

Interesting article, Orfamay. I do not, however, see how less support for affirmative action is a BAD thing. It has always been a two-edged sword. It has never been possible to explain well why an otherwise privileged black student should get chosen before a poorer, disabled, whatever, further disadvantaged white student ON THE BASIS OF EVENING OUT PRIVILEGE, SUPPORTED BY THE STATE. In effect, that white student is treated worse because of his race. And while it is deplorable that people in society treat one another badly due to race, it is far worse when that happens with support from the powers that be, the laws, and so on.

The fallacy of your argument is that it compares one anecdotal individual case with another. The mass numbers however still show the results of privilege, which Affirmative Action occasionally blunts but has not erased.

When I was at Rutgers, I knew of a group called 100 Black Men... their goal was to get 100 black men to graduate in a single class. They had not fulfilled that goal by the time I had graduated in '84.

[thejeff]

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

So your claim is that the reduction in the achievement gap in the mid-80s was brought about as much by reducing the education of the white kids as by bettering the blacks? Is there any data behind that or is it just assumption?

Your claim, on the other hand, is that increasing class sizes and decreased per capita resources have no effect on educational outcomes? Which of these claims is less likely, exactly?

We don't have to speculate. We have data. We did the experiment.

Here's a quick summary
Looks to me like almost all the closing of the gap in the late 70s and 80s was a large gain by the blacks and possibly a slight loss by the whites, while the reopening was more of a mix in math and more loss by blacks in reading.
Certainly not as simple as anything like as much from whites doing worse.

I can guess at possible reasons, but can't really do more than that. Possibly the better off white families were willing to spend more to keep their schools up to par despite more demand. Possibly just reducing the concentration of poverty, exposing the minority kids to something beyond what they'd known made a difference even without extra funding.
Quite probably integrating neighborhoods would work even better, both by color and income/class. But that's even harder to do.

At this point it will be virtually impossible to do. Trying to de-segregate neighborhoods by income would only happen with a program akin to income scaling mortgage vouchers that also scaled depending on where you wanted to buy a house, and a guaranteed home loan with no other qualification than a SS number. Anything short of that wont get you there.

In theory you could do it with zoning and requiring low income housing and rental properties to be built along with the McMansions. But it's at best a long term project and there's little political will.

OTOH, with some movement towards returning to the cities and the need to rebuild infrastructure anyway, it might be more possible than it looks at first glance.

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Quite probably integrating neighborhoods would work even better, both by color and income/class. But that's even harder to do.

At this point it will be virtually impossible to do. Trying to de-segregate neighborhoods by income would only happen with a program akin to income scaling mortgage vouchers that also scaled depending on where you wanted to buy a house, and a guaranteed home loan with no other qualification than a SS number. Anything short of that wont get you there.

In theory you could do it with zoning and requiring low income housing and rental properties to be built along with the McMansions. But it's at best a long term project and there's little political will.

OTOH, with some movement towards returning to the cities and the need to rebuild infrastructure anyway, it might be more possible than it looks at first glance.

Unfortunately gentrification is far more likely.

[LazarX]

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Quite probably integrating neighborhoods would work even better, both by color and income/class. But that's even harder to do.

At this point it will be virtually impossible to do. Trying to de-segregate neighborhoods by income would only happen with a program akin to income scaling mortgage vouchers that also scaled depending on where you wanted to buy a house, and a guaranteed home loan with no other qualification than a SS number. Anything short of that wont get you there.

In theory you could do it with zoning and requiring low income housing and rental properties to be built along with the McMansions. But it's at best a long term project and there's little political will.

OTOH, with some movement towards returning to the cities and the need to rebuild infrastructure anyway, it might be more possible than it looks at first glance.

Unfortunately gentrification is far more likely.

Not only likely but inevitable. When neighborhoods improve, the property value rises... along with tax assessments. The unavoidable consequence is that the existing neighbors are forced out for higher rent clients. The most dramatic examples of this are when gays and other LGBT or artist types "colonize" a totally decrepit and broken down neighborhood. their efforts and commerce bring improvement and gentrification and ultimately price them out of the neighborhoods they uplift. It's also why farmland inevitably disappears outside of the big agribusiness combines.

[Orfamay Quest]

pres man wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

No, it's not difficult to get into the US higher education system, and that's one of the problems. The majority of US universities practice "open admissions," but as soon as you're in, you're immediately tracked into a remedial program that more or less guarantees that you won't actually complete the degree, while accumulating unsustainable amounts of debt.

I am not sure what you mean by using the phrase "tracked into a remedial program".

Students who apply to colleges and universities often have deficiencies in their scholarly abilities (minority students are disproportionally represented in these often due to poor primary and secondary education opportunities, families with little means of supporting their children educationally, etc.). What should school do about these deficiencies?

I think you understood what I meant. The issue, of course, is that the schools have no good options; they're making a poor choice because there are no good ones, because the universities are simply reaping the harvest of previous bad policies.

Which is to say, the "privilege" is embedded so deeply into our society that most people are unwilling to dig it out. When little Sharelle goes to school without breakfast because her family can't afford food,... well, let me just suggest that nothing Susie will ever do in her entire life will involve harder work than Sharelle's attempts at subtraction.

[Orfamay Quest]

Sissyl wrote:

Indeed. But claiming that women are discriminated due to THIS gap in mean salary means very little unless you have done your controls on THIS data set properly.

Bullfrog.

The simple fact that no one has ever managed (in a reasonably sized study) to make the wage gap go away suggests there's something persistent there.

The whole point of statistics is that you don't need unobtainably perfect data.

Especially when all of the effects you are grasping at to explain away my point are actually further demonstrations of it. ("Well, women are paid less because society expects them to take time away from work to raise a family." "Yes, or to put it another way, men are privileged in being allowed to concentrate on their career over their family without disapproval.")

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

Indeed. But claiming that women are discriminated due to THIS gap in mean salary means very little unless you have done your controls on THIS data set properly.

Bullfrog.

The simple fact that no one has ever managed (in a reasonably sized study) to make the wage gap go away suggests there's something persistent there.

The whole point of statistics is that you don't need unobtainably perfect data.

Especially when all of the effects you are grasping at to explain away my point are actually further demonstrations of it. ("Well, women are paid less because society expects them to take time away from work to raise a family." "Yes, or to put it another way, men are privileged in being allowed to concentrate on their career over their family without disapproval.")

There are broad measures of discrimination, like the pay gap. There are smaller studies showing specific discrimination, like the hiring ones based on names. There are studies showing that the pattern starts early, like the middle school math one. There are anecdotes, like those from the trans scientist.

But there's always some reason to dispute them. This study is too broad, so it obviously ignores specific choices and differences. This one is too specific, so you can't generalize. It's nonsense. It's denial. The pattern is clear.

[Sissyl]

Well, it's not as if trying to prove something by statistics is an easy task at the best of times, thejeff. The problem is always the same: You need to control for the right things. If you don't, you can't draw conclusions.

Sweden has the same pay gap. Big surprise, every country does. And yes, women still stay at home with the kids more than men do, though it is changing for the better here, what with kindergarten and paternity leave etc.

Once upon a time, we had a state office called (transl) the Equality Ombudsman (JämO) who collected data regarding discrimination against women. The office was to be joined to other such offices that dealt with different types of discrimination into Discrimination Ombudsman (DO). At the time they did, they were just getting done their major study of a serious number of workplaces in all branches (something like 25000 of them), chosen randomly, going through the salaries of men and women there and checking to see to what degree the women's salaries were not where they should be after considering their CVs, work experience, their responsibilities, and so on. Note that this office was designed to FIND differences, not smooth them over. Even this bunch of Social Justice Warriors, I think would be a fair appellation, found unfair salaries in less than 0.5% of cases or something similar.

So what gives?

There are many ways to describe reality through data. Small errors can easily become systematic if you are not aware of them. When people use statistics, they are often not very good at the finer points of it, which still exist for a reason. Even if you have the statistics down, you need to deal with confirmation and observation bias, which can quite easily warp anything you study. Not to mention, there are quite a lot of people here that work studying discrimination of women, so there is a lot of vested interest as well.

That is certainly not to say women are not discriminated against, merely that even hackneyed old truths need to be reexamined from time to time with an eye to whether they are still valid. Nor am I saying that individual women don't get treated horribly.

[Caineach]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

[BigDTBone]

Caineach wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

Not so much. See Texas schools which have been doing exactly that since 1993 (until recently.) the disparity still exists.

[Orfamay Quest]

BigDTBone wrote:

Caineach wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

Not so much. See Texas schools which have been doing exactly that since 1993 (until recently.) the disparity still exists.

Do you have a citation? My understanding is that in Texas as elsewhere, the largest component of school funding is local property taxes.

[Kryzbyn]

End property taxes?

[Caineach]

Kryzbyn wrote:

End property taxes?

Or manage them on a state instead of local level for purposes of school funding.

[Kryzbyn]

Doesn't solve the valuations having impact on who lives where.

[Krensky]

But it does solve that impacting school funding.

[Orfamay Quest]

Kryzbyn wrote:

Doesn't solve the valuations having impact on who lives where.

It does to some extent. The single biggest driver of land value is generally school quality; normalize that and you'll go a long way to normalizing valuation disparity as well.

On a more general note,... no single thing that one can do will solve everything, and very few things will actually solve anything. But there are a lot of partial approaches that will mitigate some things. One should not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Too often that is used as a delaying tactic to prevent anything from being done.

[Kryzbyn]

It would also help if we could decide as a species that other members of the species can't (or shouldn't) have nice things...

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Kryzbyn wrote:

Doesn't solve the valuations having impact on who lives where.

It does to some extent. The single biggest driver of land value is generally school quality; normalize that and you'll go a long way to normalizing valuation disparity as well.

It's also one of the biggest things driving disparate property tax rates. Trying to cobble together a school budget on a bunch of low valued properties.

[thejeff]

Kryzbyn wrote:

It would also help if we could decide as a species that other members of the species can't (or shouldn't) have nice things...

I think we've pretty much decided that.

We just don't like to admit it.

[BigDTBone]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

Caineach wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

Not so much. See Texas schools which have been doing exactly that since 1993 (until recently.) the disparity still exists.

Do you have a citation? My understanding is that in Texas as elsewhere, the largest component of school funding is local property taxes.

In 1993 texas passed the "Robin Hood law," where by local property taxes were redistributed across the state so that the poor districts got the same funding as the rich districts. So, you are correct that local property tax does pay for schools.

Edit: Im lazy today so you get wikipedia

Note that this was over turned as unconstitutional in 2013, but it was on the books for 20 years. It didn't work.

[BigDTBone]

This sums up the discussion on privilege rather nicely.

[thejeff]

BigDTBone wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

Caineach wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

Not so much. See Texas schools which have been doing exactly that since 1993 (until recently.) the disparity still exists.

Do you have a citation? My understanding is that in Texas as elsewhere, the largest component of school funding is local property taxes.

In 1993 texas passed the "Robin Hood law," where by local property taxes were redistributed across the state so that the poor districts got the same funding as the rich districts. So, you are correct that local property tax does pay for schools.

Edit: Im lazy today so you get wikipedia

Note that this was over turned as unconstitutional in 2013, but it was on the books for 20 years. It didn't work.

Just on a quick glance, that looks like just about the worst possible way to try to implement such a thing.

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed, districts could set their own property tax rates (with a cap), but any revenue over a certain amount per pupil would be taken and distributed to other poorer districts.
Which generally only happened when someone miscalculated, because why would you choose to raise taxes on yourself knowing they'd be taken away?

[BigNorseWolf]

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed, districts could set their own property tax rates (with a cap), but any revenue over a certain amount per pupil would be taken and distributed to other poorer districts.

1) This would mean that every community would drop their property tax values ,since there's no incentive to pay more

2) Poor districts already pay more per pupil than better off ones. Higher cost of living= higher wages, high rent, having to pay more for people to teach there or they don't.

[thejeff]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed, districts could set their own property tax rates (with a cap), but any revenue over a certain amount per pupil would be taken and distributed to other poorer districts.

1) This would mean that every community would drop their property tax values ,since there's no incentive to pay more

2) Poor districts already pay more per pupil than better off ones. Higher cost of living= higher wages, high rent, having to pay more for people to teach there or they don't.

I'm not following point 2? lower cost of living in poor area -> low wages, low rent. Poorer districts generally pay lower wages and get lower quality teachers. (And some truly dedicated ones, working for less than they could make elsewhere because they see the need.)

OTOH, poor areas tend to need more support services - more kids with troubles.

But pretty much your first point seems spot on. I'd be interested in actual funding numbers - did money actually get distributed more equally under this law? Or was it still strongly unbalanced?

[BigNorseWolf]

Many poor areas are inner cities with very HIGH costs of living.

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

Caineach wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.

What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.

Hell, even reorganizing school budgets on the state level would fix a lot of the issues.

Not so much. See Texas schools which have been doing exactly that since 1993 (until recently.) the disparity still exists.

Do you have a citation? My understanding is that in Texas as elsewhere, the largest component of school funding is local property taxes.

In 1993 texas passed the "Robin Hood law," where by local property taxes were redistributed across the state so that the poor districts got the same funding as the rich districts. So, you are correct that local property tax does pay for schools.

Edit: Im lazy today so you get wikipedia

Note that this was over turned as unconstitutional in 2013, but it was on the books for 20 years. It didn't work.

Just on a quick glance, that looks like just about the worst possible way to try to implement such a thing.

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed,...

What is interesting is the exact opposite happened because virtually every district in the state maxed out which caused the judiciary to see it as a state property tax (which is unconstitutional in Texas) so it was kicked.

The reason it maxed out everywhere was because in order to get a bond package on the ballot you had to have hit the tax cap. So, all the districts that had money maxed taxes so they could float bond packages to actually pay for schools they wanted. And all the poor districts maxed taxes so they could benefit from the program because in order to benefit from the program you had to be at the max. That last bit was added because people were concerned that some districts would just drop their property taxes way low and mooch without having to pay anything at all.

At any rate, Bond packages continued to grow the disparity between rich and poor even with state reallocation of funds. Just as they would continue to do if the state collected the funds directly.

[thejeff]

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

In 1993 texas passed the "Robin Hood law," where by local property taxes were redistributed across the state so that the poor districts got the same funding as the rich districts. So, you are correct that local property tax does pay for schools.

Edit: Im lazy today so you get wikipedia

Note that this was over turned as unconstitutional in 2013, but it was on the books for 20 years. It didn't work.

Just on a quick glance, that looks like just about the worst possible way to try to implement such a thing.

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed, districts could set their own property tax rates (with a cap), but any revenue over a certain amount per pupil would be taken and distributed to other poorer districts.
Which generally only happened when someone miscalculated, because why would you choose to raise taxes on yourself knowing they'd be taken away?

What is interesting is the exact opposite happened because virtually every district in the state maxed out which caused the judiciary to see it as a state property tax (which is unconstitutional in Texas) so it was kicked.

The reason it maxed out everywhere was because in order to get a bond package on the ballot you had to have hit the tax cap. So, all the districts that had money maxed taxes so they could float bond packages to actually pay for schools they wanted. And all the poor districts maxed taxes so they could benefit from the program because in order to benefit from the program you had to be at the max. That last bit was added because people were concerned that some districts would just drop their property taxes way low and mooch without having to pay anything at all.

At any rate, Bond packages continued to grow the disparity between rich and poor even with state reallocation of funds. Just as they would continue to do if the state collected the funds directly.

Sounds to me like the cap was too low. Was there really a significant amount of distribution or were even most of the rich districts still below the per pupil cap?

Even so, the weirdness with the bond packages seems to have broken the intent.

[LazarX]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

That's an argument with false equivlence. Because you know and I know, that Sharelle's parents will move Heaven and Earth to keep their Sharelle out of Suzie's school.

[thejeff]

LazarX wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.

Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.

That's an argument with false equivlence. Because you know and I know, that Sharelle's parents will move Heaven and Earth to keep their Sharelle out of Suzie's school.

(I think you've got that backwards.)

And historically, any violence was at least as likely to be aimed at the black kids.

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

In 1993 texas passed the "Robin Hood law," where by local property taxes were redistributed across the state so that the poor districts got the same funding as the rich districts. So, you are correct that local property tax does pay for schools.

Edit: Im lazy today so you get wikipedia

Note that this was over turned as unconstitutional in 2013, but it was on the books for 20 years. It didn't work.

Just on a quick glance, that looks like just about the worst possible way to try to implement such a thing.

Rather than just have a statewide tax and distribute the funding as needed, districts could set their own property tax rates (with a cap), but any revenue over a certain amount per pupil would be taken and distributed to other poorer districts.
Which generally only happened when someone miscalculated, because why would you choose to raise taxes on yourself knowing they'd be taken away?

What is interesting is the exact opposite happened because virtually every district in the state maxed out which caused the judiciary to see it as a state property tax (which is unconstitutional in Texas) so it was kicked.

The reason it maxed out everywhere was because in order to get a bond package on the ballot you had to have hit the tax cap. So, all the districts that had money maxed taxes so they could float bond packages to actually pay for schools they wanted. And all the poor districts maxed taxes so they could benefit from the program because in order to benefit from the program you had to be at the max. That last bit was added because people were concerned that some districts would just drop their property taxes way low and mooch without having to pay anything at all.

At any rate, Bond packages continued to grow the disparity between rich and poor even with state reallocation of funds. Just as they would continue to do if the state collected the funds directly.

Sounds to me like the cap was too low. Was there really a significant amount of distribution or were even most of the rich districts still below the per pupil cap?

Even so, the weirdness with the bond packages seems to have broken the intent.

It wasn't a per pupil, it was $1.50 per $100 of property value. And most areas in Texas were maxed out, which is what convinced the judiciary to see it as a state tax. It may have been too low, but you are right about the bond packages being really tricky.

What you wind up with were districts trying to fund everything out of the property tax budget, Salaries, improvements, construction, maintenance.

But the richer districts would do a bond package every 3-4 years to renovate, update, or build new schools and use 100% of the property tax money to pay salaries. So they were able to offer higher wages, a better teacher/student ratio, AND nicer facilities to potential teachers. Naturally, the better qualified teachers went to the richer areas.

[thejeff]

BigDTBone wrote:

It wasn't a per pupil, it was $1.50 per $100 of property value. And most areas in Texas were maxed out, which is what convinced the judiciary to see it as a state tax. It may have been too low, but you are right about the bond packages being really tricky.

What you wind up with were districts trying to fund everything out of the property tax budget, Salaries, improvements, construction, maintenance.

But the richer districts would do a bond package every 3-4 years to renovate, update, or build new schools and use 100% of the property tax money to pay salaries. So they were able to offer higher wages, a better teacher/student ratio, AND nicer facilities to potential teachers. Naturally, the better qualified teachers went to the richer areas.

Two different numbers, but I wasn't clear. The tax was capped at a rate, as you say. Any money raised by the tax over a certain amount per pupil was taken and distributed.

I was wondering if, even in most of the richer districts, that tax rate still didn't lead to much redistribution.

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

It wasn't a per pupil, it was $1.50 per $100 of property value. And most areas in Texas were maxed out, which is what convinced the judiciary to see it as a state tax. It may have been too low, but you are right about the bond packages being really tricky.

What you wind up with were districts trying to fund everything out of the property tax budget, Salaries, improvements, construction, maintenance.

But the richer districts would do a bond package every 3-4 years to renovate, update, or build new schools and use 100% of the property tax money to pay salaries. So they were able to offer higher wages, a better teacher/student ratio, AND nicer facilities to potential teachers. Naturally, the better qualified teachers went to the richer areas.

Two different numbers, but I wasn't clear. The tax was capped at a rate, as you say. Any money raised by the tax over a certain amount per pupil was taken and distributed.

I was wondering if, even in most of the richer districts, that tax rate still didn't lead to much redistribution.

It did for sure, along with lottery proceeds and a portion of the state sales tax.

[The Raven Black]

Sissyl wrote:

I was on a course for work once, and went through an exercise. It went like this:

------------

Ann and Bob live on different sides of an infinitely long, infinitely dangerous river (filled with super-piranhas) that you need a boat to cross. They stand on their respective banks and shout that they love one another so much.

One day, Ann decides to go to the owner of the boat, Charlie. Charlie tells her that she can have the boat if she sleeps with him. She refuses.

Ann goes to Dave, to ask him to intercede with Charlie on her behalf. Dave refuses, telling her that he wants no part of any of it, and that she should leave him alone.

So, Ann goes back to Charlie, does the deed, and gets the boat from him. With it, she crosses the river, and is united with Bob.

Only, Bob asks her how she got Charlie to give her the boat. She tells him the truth, and Bob calls her various terrible things and throws her out.

So, Ann goes to his neighbour, Eric, tells him her story, and asks him to beat up Bob for her. He does so.

-----------

Reading this, how would you rank the behaviour of these people, from best to worst?

Just realized that the exercise described here is rife with gender stereotypes through the first names used.

As such, it is an excellent basis for understanding how much gender bias the reader has.

The easiest way out would be to replace the first names with letters. But this does not help us sorting out gender bias as it eliminates the genders completely. That said, it would give us the most precise assessment of the reader's priority of values unaffected by gender bias.

A classic yet interesting way is to reverse the implied genders through the use of opposite first names. Seeing how our reaction differs from that we had to the initial exercise is quite telling :

******************

Bob and Ann live on different sides of an infinitely long, infinitely dangerous river (filled with super-piranhas) that you need a boat to cross. They stand on their respective banks and shout that they love one another so much.

One day, Bob decides to go to the owner of the boat, Shirley. Shirley tells him that he can have the boat if he sleeps with her. He refuses.

Bob goes to Dana, to ask her to intercede with Shirley on his behalf. Dana refuses, telling him that she wants no part of any of it, and that he should leave her alone.

So, Bob goes back to Shirley, does the deed, and gets the boat from her. With it, he crosses the river, and is united with Ann.

Only, Ann asks him how he got Shirley to give him the boat. He tells her the truth, and Ann calls him various terrible things and throws him out.

So, Bob goes to his neighbour, Erin, tells her his story, and asks her to beat up Ann for him. She does so.

-----------

Reading this, how would you rank the behaviour of these people, from best to worst?

*****************

Using only male first names or female first names helps detect other bias such as homophobia since both romantic and sexual relations are present in the exercise.

I find this much more interesting than the very first exercise :-)

[Rynjin]

...It's the same exercise, except with different characters doing the bad things.

[thejeff]

Rynjin wrote:

...It's the same exercise, except with different characters doing the bad things.

Of course it's the same exercise. That's the point.

It's probably not effective done right after the first version. Done in isolation, I'd bet you'd get different results, precisely because of the gender changes. We react differently to men and women doing the same things.

[BigDTBone]

thejeff wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

...It's the same exercise, except with different characters doing the bad things.

Of course it's the same exercise. That's the point.

It's probably not effective done right after the first version. Done in isolation, I'd bet you'd get different results, precisely because of the gender changes. We react differently to men and women doing the same things.

The really interesting excercise would be to flip the genders of the couple and the boat owner, but leave everyone else male.

[Kirth Gersen]

The Raven Black wrote:

One day, Bob decides to go to the owner of the boat, Shirley. Shirley tells him that he can have the boat if he sleeps with her.

Chances of this happening on any planet I've ever lived on? An awful lot less than the other way around.

In almost every species with sexual reproduction as we know it, females are much pickier about mates, and it's the male of the species that goes to whatever lengths to attract them. That's basic biology, not gender stereotyping.

Granted, the infinitely-long river in the scenario has already destroyed any sort of suspension of disbelief, but why add insult to injury?

[Rynjin]

thejeff wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

...It's the same exercise, except with different characters doing the bad things.

Of course it's the same exercise. That's the point.

It's probably not effective done right after the first version. Done in isolation, I'd bet you'd get different results, precisely because of the gender changes. We react differently to men and women doing the same things.

I'm pretty sure rape, extortion, and assault are frowned upon no matter the gender.

[TriOmegaZero]

But the rationalizations for such acts vary when the perpetrator is gendered differently.

[thejeff]

Rynjin wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

...It's the same exercise, except with different characters doing the bad things.

Of course it's the same exercise. That's the point.

It's probably not effective done right after the first version. Done in isolation, I'd bet you'd get different results, precisely because of the gender changes. We react differently to men and women doing the same things.

I'm pretty sure rape, extortion, and assault are frowned upon no matter the gender.

You'd think so, wouldn't you.

One of the tricky things about rape, to choose the touchiest example, is that everyone agrees that rape is horrible. That just leads some people to decide that cases they're more sympathetic to weren't really rape. Classic example being marital rape. Not considered rape until relatively recently. Still not considered so by some. (I've heard "She gave consent when she said 'I do'" right on these boards.)

In this case, we didn't even get a unanimous agreement here that rape, extortion and assault were involved. I suspect the numbers who thought they were would shift with changing genders. No one would state that rape, extortion or assault were fine.

Sadly we've poisoned the well here. Revealed the trick, so we can't retest it. You'd have to do a statistically significant sample with the original genders and then with various genders changes to see how the results shifted.

[thejeff]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

One day, Bob decides to go to the owner of the boat, Shirley. Shirley tells him that he can have the boat if he sleeps with her.

Chances of this happening on any planet I've ever lived on? An awful lot less than the other way around.

In almost every species with sexual reproduction as we know it, females are much pickier about mates, and it's the male of the species that goes to whatever lengths to attract them. That's basic biology, not gender stereotyping.

True, but vaguely plausible if you assume Shirley's known Bob and been interested for awhile.

I've seen stranger things in high school & college.

[Rynjin]

I'd be interested in seeing that study...someone MUST have done it at some point. Anybody know of papers on the subject?

[Scythia]

Rynjin wrote:

I'd be interested in seeing that study...someone MUST have done it at some point. Anybody know of papers on the subject?

It's not a scientific study, but it is oddly relevant.

Gauging fan reaction will be fascinating.

[Cerberus Seven]

Scythia wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

I'd be interested in seeing that study...someone MUST have done it at some point. Anybody know of papers on the subject?

It's not a scientific study, but it is oddly relevant.

Gauging fan reaction will be fascinating.

Yes, because the world needed MORE of the Twilight fictional universe, now with extra controversy! Where's a time machine when you need one, so you can erase the very notion of vampires from existence?

[Krensky]

I find making children read Dracula and Carmilla before letting them read Twilight solves most issues.

[Tacticslion]

Krensky wrote:

I find making children read Dracula and Carmilla before letting them read Twilight solves most issues.

I gotta say, the original Dracula by Stoker is a pretty great read. I loved it.

... though his grasp of actual lore, actual history, actual science and medicine, and actual cultures are weak, to the point of completely reinventing vampire lore, heavily misrepresenting various real-world cultures, presenting some extremely unhealthy practices, and pseudo-religious overtones and cultural mores in dealing with (late, but still) teen romance; additionally, his females are kind of cardboard cutout one-dimensional characters who rely on a bevy of men who love them to come save them from a grisly fates (that may be partially their own fault).

So one could say he's kind of like Stephanie Meyer a generic YA novelist of no particular name or culture. >.>

(No, but seriously, I'm not a fan of twilight, and nothing I've seen makes me like it. I also really like Dracula. But the parallels are kind of funny.)

[Mythic Tacticslion]

Cerberus Seven wrote:

Scythia wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

I'd be interested in seeing that study...someone MUST have done it at some point. Anybody know of papers on the subject?

It's not a scientific study, but it is oddly relevant.

Gauging fan reaction will be fascinating.

Yes, because the world needed MORE of the Twilight fictional universe, now with extra controversy! Where's a time machine when you need one, so you can erase the very notion of vampires from existence?

You'll be needing the machine to predate Stoker by quite some time. Probably somewhere about juuuuuuuuuuust before Europe is settled. Also, due to how they're all linked, in order to do so, you'll need to take care of ghosts, goblins, ghouls, zombies, and similar creatures, as well as sprites, fey, and probably angels, devils, and so on- waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit a minute! You want to destroy Pathfinder! Hey! >:I

[Cerberus Seven]

Mythic Tacticslion wrote:

Cerberus Seven wrote:

Scythia wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

I'd be interested in seeing that study...someone MUST have done it at some point. Anybody know of papers on the subject?

It's not a scientific study, but it is oddly relevant.

Gauging fan reaction will be fascinating.

Yes, because the world needed MORE of the Twilight fictional universe, now with extra controversy! Where's a time machine when you need one, so you can erase the very notion of vampires from existence?

You'll be needing the machine to predate Stoker by quite some time. Probably somewhere about juuuuuuuuuuust before Europe is settled. Also, due to how they're all linked, in order to do so, you'll need to take care of ghosts, goblins, ghouls, zombies, and similar creatures, as well as sprites, fey, and probably angels, devils, and so on- waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit a minute! You want to destroy Pathfinder! Hey! >:I

You can't prove that. XP

[PathlessBeth]

I don't really have an opinion on Twilight itself (as I've neither seen the movies nor read the books). However, I absolutely abhor the way its supposed detractors will insist that Twilight is "responsible" for a huge range of fantasy literature which predates it.

If you believe the self-styled anti-Twilight-crusader crowd, then Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Buffyverse, Varney the Vampire, the first few Harry Potter books, as well as mythology from Africa, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, China, Korea, India, Philippines, Vietnam, Britain, Ireland, Native Americans, Mongolia, and Tibet, are all the direct result of evil Twighlight fanboys copying ideas from Twighlight. The fact that everything I just listed predates Twilight doesn't seem to bother the "anti-Twilight-crusader" crowd.

More generally, Twilight gets credited (or "blamed") for inventing and/or popularizing a variety of common story elements and tropes which predate it, and any presence of any of these story elements causes whining about Twilight. These tropes include, but are not limited to:
--Vampires who can survive in sunlight: The very first fictional account of a vampire being destroyed by sunlight was the 1922 movie Nosferatu. Virtually all accounts of vampires in fiction and mythology for hundreds of years previously could survive in sunlight, including Dracula himself. \begin{sarcasm}But all of them are apparently ripoffs on Twilight (first published in 2005)\end{sarcasm}

--"Sympathetic" undead (or vampires in particular): Good or at least neutral undead are commonplace in mythology of most real-world cultures. Even putting traditional sources aside, sympathetic vampires were a part of modern popular culture in stories like Varney the Vampire (1845), White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade, and even the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series (though only a few vampires in that one). All of which predate Twighlight.

--Undead and romance mixed together: Even ignoring mythological sources, romance between undead and humans has been a part of mainstream American pop culture at least since The Mummy (1932 movie). Actually, undead-and-human romance is central to the not-as-well-known Mummy silent movie from 1911. In the 1911 movie, it is believed that a mummy actually turns out to be the hero (though unfortunately, the film is lost).

Like it or not, Stephenie Meyer neither invented nor popularized any of those story elements, but she ironically gets credit for them by the very people who whine about how much they think she is a talentless hack.

Honestly, the most vocal anti-Twilight-crusaders remind me of the time when I was naive enough to read the comments of a YouTube video. The video was a performance of Antonín Dvořák's 8th symphony (which was first performed in 1890). One of the first comments was "it's a complete ripoff on the soundtrack for Jaws." :|
That was how I learned to avoid the comments section of YouTube. But it's what I am reminded of when I see people whining about the "corrupting influence of Twighlight".