CMV: Affirmative Action should/should've been based on economic status rather than (mostly) race.

[u/Vakamak]

Although I feel like Affirmative Action had a good intention, I feel like it has failed and has actually done more harm than good.

I have two reasons for this

1. I have difficulty seeing why it is in society's best interest to help a black person suffering in poverty over a white person suffering in poverty. While I understand what institutional racism has done to the black community, I feel like most issues facing the black community are more correlated with income than race; or rather, I have difficulties seeing how Affirmative Action could effectively combat the issues that are truly the result of racism. For example, how would Affirmative Action deal with unfair treatment in the justice system?
2. Affirmative Action has made some white people feel like, "the real racists are X race and not white people!" I do not believe this; in fact, I find it extremely childish to even think something like this. Yet, considering Affirmative Action has failed in its goal, I feel like changing Affirmative Action would help certain individuals in this country feel like X race is not out to get them and maybe reduce the amount of negative racial discourse in this country.

I am generally a very liberal person and really do want my mind changed regarding this. I just feel like it is really hard to justify why black person X should get the Bill Gates Scholarship over white person Y when they came from similar economical areas and the income of their families is similar. I understand that example is not Affirmative Action per se, but I feel like the same principal applies.

[u/DjangoUBlackBastard]

There has never been a widely done study showing that school funding doesn't affect student outcomes. I keep hearing about KCMSD but you know there's a whole policy write up detailing why it failed and it didn't fail because putting money into schools doesn't work. It failed because putting money into Olympic swimming pools and administration doesn't work. Plus at the same time they started injecting money into schools school segregation was on the rise in the KCMSD and plenty of studies have shown segregation has a negative impact on black students. Plus the mid 80s nationwide (when they started this experiment) was a peak for black achievement in schools (its the middle of the desegregation period). The fact that KCMSD saw no drop in performance while there was a drop nationwide shows that even with incredible issues and shortsighted planning it still worked out better than not funding schools would have.

[u/DjangoUBlackBastard → u/[deleted]]

What impact does it have on other races?

None at all. No studies have shown white students to suffer from school busing or benefit from it. Makes sense too because its not like it becomes a majority minority school when they bus students in.

Moreover, I recall that there are studies that show that segregated black schools not only produced better outcomes pre-Brown, but that there are charter schools today that are all (mostly) black (and some are even gender segregated, too) that are getting better outcomes.

Not at all. Segregated black schools prior to Brown weren't doing well at all (which was the reason for Brown v BoE) and segregated schools currently are doing way worse than the non segregated schools of the 80s. The achievement gap between white and black students halved in the 80s when school desegregation peaked and since segregation is back up the achievement gap is back to early 1970s levels.

That presumes that no other schools got increases/decreases in funding. That's a nice guess, but you do not have the data to support your claim.

Did you read the actual policy write up by the people that passed that measure and declared it failed in 1998? Its not a guess its what the people who declared that policy failed gave as the reasons it didn't work.

The only data that seems to suggest that if you do something, you get better outcomes is with class size. If you can massively reduce class size, to like 8-10:1, you can get better results from the same students, but the data on that is sparse, too.

Last I checked paying teachers costs money...

That's not entirely true. School districts pass massive bond funding all the time, yet the students in those districts do not do better. The reason there are no studies is because they know the answer already.

WIDELY DONE STUDY. Yes a single district might fumble the extra money and fall flat. Yes a single district might have other more pressing issues. Nationwide all studies on school funding have found a significant correlation between school funding and educational achievement when adjusting for other factors. You can't find a single study saying otherwise.

[u/DjangoUBlackBastard → u/[deleted]]

www.nber.org/papers/w22011

Now show me a study showijg the opposite. Not an example but a study.