Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame)

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal

In case anyone wanted to see some actual numbers on per capita spending for white students and non-white students. It’s factually false to assert that black kids get more funding per capita than white students. The reverse is actually true.

:confused: iiandyiiii, I don’t see that quote in that linked article. Am I just missing something?

I think the bullets are from here:

Damn it, wrong link!

EDIT: Ninja’d!

Thanks! I don’t know if those data directly contradict SlackerInc’s claims about intra-district spending variations, because I haven’t yet identified where in this long thread SlackerInc cited sources for that. If anybody can point me to such cites, much appreciated.

His claim (and the more I talk to him the less willing I am to accept his claims) is that those numbers exclude federal spending on special education students. I looked that number up, and it was about 11.5 billion. His further claim is that since more black students are in special education classes (I looked that number up too, and it’s 15% of black students vs 13% of white students), that this means that black students overall get more funding than white students. I’d run the numbers if I cared enough, but I don’t. If anyone does, here they are (all number for 2014 school year, since I was able to find data for that year, dollars in 000’s):

Total spending on public schools: 625,015,858 cite
Total federal spending on special education programs: 11,500,000 cite
Total number of students K-12: 50,094,000 cite
Number of black students K-12: 8,015,040 cite
Number of black students in special education: 1,202,256 cite

OK, so if there are 8,015,040 black students in the US, and the funding shortfall per black student is $344, that’s a funding shortfall of $2.8 billion.

If 13% of students overall are in special ed, that’s 6.5 million students in special ed, or 1,766 dollars per student of federal spending.

If 15% of black students are in special education, that’s 1.2 million, times 1,766 is 2.1 billion in special ed federal spending on black students.

Shortfall of 2.8 billion. Special ed funding of 2.1 billion. That’s still a net shortfall.

This is why you shouldn’t half-ass things–you make errors. I looked at the total federal spending to black special ed students, but of course I should have only looked at the *additional *federal spending on black students. That is, since 13% of white students are in special ed, and 15% of black students, I should only look at the federal spending on the additional 2% of black students in special ed, which is 279 million.

So this should say: shortfall of funding of 2.8 billion. Additional funding for special ed of 279 billion. Total funding shortfall on black students of 2.6 billion.

I’m still half-asssing this, but whatever the correct result is, it’s pretty clear that that idiot **SlackerInc **was talking out of his ass.

I wanted to look at Andy’s cite to see if it was as bogus and cherrypicked as the one EE offered earlier. What I found is that what Andy claimed to quote from the link does not actually appear there! Here’s some stuff that does, though:

Okay, no argument from me. But then this same article precedes all that with this claim:

:smack: Yup, “failing schools” are why black kids are behind at age two and when entering kindergarten. Jesus fucking Christ, this illustrates exactly what I have been raging against.

Can anyone spot the almost certain correlation/causation conflation? Education “reformers” pull this shit all the fucking time and it drives me up a wall.

Let’s also note that holding back a student means spending significantly more money on them! But that’s never accounted for, even though it costs schools actual money.

There are four statements there. Only one, if true, is a legitimate complaint against the schools themselves. Can you spot which is which? :dubious:

There’s those damnable “failing schools” again.

(Why is there a tag for “Michael Brown” in this article?)

Now I see Andy presented the wrong link, although I was glad to cite from it to show what I’m up against. And now I see that as expected, the actual data are just like the numbers EE presented earlier, that do not include federal money—and probably don’t include special education spending either, or preschool, afterschool, tutoring, nutrition programs, etc.

Kimstu, it doesn’t appear that EE knows what the word “intradistrict” means. You might need to explain in simpler language.

All of this reply applies to “whitey being smarter than those negros” how?

You can see the stuff in the quote boxes, right?

Saying that “American education is rife with problems” is not the same thing as blaming all those problems on the specific educational policies of so-called “failing schools”. It is possible to have both some systemic childhood learning problems beginning before the start of school attendance (which we do) and some flawed schooling policies that could be improved.

The reason your “raging” on this issue has been so ineffective here is that you’ve been repeatedly trying to frame the issue as a matter of innate genetic differences in ability that are intrinsically beyond the schools’ power to remedy. All of which is essentially unsupported speculation on your part.

As I said, I haven’t managed to figure out exactly where the numbers are coming from that are leading to this conflict in interpretation. Are you referring to a different source of educational spending data, other than the ones cited by EE and iiandyiiii in the last few posts? If so, could you direct me to your cite, so I can try to compare the data myself? Because at present, I don’t see precisely what you’re disagreeing with EE on, or why.

Request noted. It won’t happen this week or next due to RL issues though. Probably not the one after either. It’s a 15 minute project I’m guessing.

Honestly, I’m going to be reluctant to resurrect this thread. Dunno how this will play out.

Seeing as you are too chicken to even tell me what it means to be “white” it just appears to be confirmation bias being used to justify bigotry.

Or are you willing to own up that as a white male you are a rapist,

Can you justify why you white people are Pedofiles? who just can’t keep themselves from trying to have sex with farm animals?

What good is intelligence if you use it to rape children and animals? What about the cold climate of Europe bred so many sheep lovers?

Aren’t the other ‘races’ more superior because they are mature enough to not rape or resort to trying to screw children?

(I get that you won’t get how absurd this is)

How about this, dumbass–**you **provide a cite for **your **claim. I’m willing to do some of your work for you, because, as you have so comprehensively displayed, you lack the intellectual capacity to do it on your own, but I would like to see what you are actually claiming, in an actual cite.

Kimstu, please tell **SlackerInc **that I think it’s a good thing he tells people he has an high IQ, because I don’t think there’s any way anyone could tell just from interacting with him.

Rat avatar, it does sound plausible to me that rape and pedophilia run more strongly among white men. Mass shootings too.

On intradistrict funding: who knows what is happening now in this ongoing shitshow of a “presidential administration”, which is not a normal period of modern U.S. history. But as of 2016, the federal government mandated that districts not spend less per student in their Title I schools, although they could spend more:

This almost certainly doesn’t include SpEd, making it a virtual certainty that spending in a given district’s poorest schools is significantly greater per pupil than in its most affluent.

Should different districts have different resources? No. I would strongly prefer a national school system as in France. That’s a complete political nonstarter in this country, unfortunately. There’s nothing teachers or administrators can do to change that. And the federal government does bring things closer to parity by subsidizing poorer districts.

Thanks SlackerInc, but AFAICT that link is a description of modifications to legislation on education spending, rather than any data on how much was actually spent.

Exactly what specific claim(s) are you making about racial differences in per-pupil spending, and exactly what data are you basing your claim(s) on?

Federal law (ESSA) requires that state and local governments not spend less within districts on Title I schools, and not play a shell game of reducing those schools’ funding when federal funding is increased. This ensures that the overall spending within a district is greater at Title I schools than at others. If you don’t see that reflected in the link, I’m at a loss to understand why.

And I will again note that this is probably before the extra SpEd funding is factored in.

Tell you what: find me one school district where public data is available on the budget for each school, after including federal funding, SpEd, etc., and the per capita spending (total budget divided by enrollment) is less at a Title I school than at a non-Title I school in the same district. Just one.

This isn’t a sufficient cite. You made a claim, you need to support the claim you made.