[blasteye]

> And being 42nd out of 50 on K-12 education and highest poverty rate, aren't good things to lead with. Lots of opportunities to improve.

How much does that have to do with its sanctuary status & high illegal immigration numbers.

California is home to 2.3 mil illegal immigrants, and 12.3% of all k-12 students in California are illegal immigrants. Other states with that high of an illegal immigrant student demographic are Arizona, Nevada, and Texas [1]. According to US News, Nevada is #49, Arizona #43, and Texas #41 in K12 public school rnakings by state. [2].

I'd assume that illegal immigrants are generally on the poor side. The children of illegal immigrants likely speak english as second language.

Generally speaking, kids who are ESL and kids who are poor score lower on standardized tests. Now imagine both poor & esl & having to deal with stress of being an illegal immigrant. These kids have everything going against them and are likely going to score worse. Put enough of these kids in a school, and you're going to bring down the education for the non illegal immigrants. You're only as good as who you surround yourself.

[1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/unauthorized-immigra...

[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

[dang]

Please don't start ideological or political flamewars on HN. They're not what this site is for, and destroy what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[blasteye]

I was expressing a political view, which is no different than the link submitted.

I think its unfair to censor one political view and not the other political views.

[foota]

That's not what 1 is saying, for the record. 1 is share of children with parents that are undocumented.

[omegaworks]

>How much does that have to do with its sanctuary status & high illegal immigration numbers.

Zero. It has zero to do with how California treats its most vulnerable immigrant population, and everything to do with how California funds its schools.

The Berkeley CA School board recently had to make hard choices in its yearly budget. Berkeley is one of the wealthiest cities in the state. It was forced to slash safety officers and special programs due to a $2 million dollar budget shortfall. Less than the cost of a house. [1] America funds its schools primarily via property taxes, so Proposition 13, a measure that freezes that tax revenue, keeps $2 million dollar properties taxed as though they were valued at ~$100,000. It ensures California schools will always be begging to meet the needs of the state's growing population. [2]

[1] http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/02/09/berkeley-school-board...

[2] https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/962425686039306240

[lr4444lr]

Thereally are several examples of per pupil expenditure against student performance that suggest you are wrong. NYC for example spends about $22K per kid. Results are middling at best, even with a number of troubling things done to mask how bad things like attendance, test scores, and graduation rates really are. A similar situation exists in Washington DC. Money is simply not the answer to all problems.

[narrator]

Money spent on education in the U.S has very little influence on test scores[1]. The top scorers on internationally standardized tests like Korea and Japan spend much less per student than the U.S. Countries that spend more have mixed results [2].

The education "debate" reminds me of the healthcare "debate" in which the sole issue debated is whether we should spend more money on it. The irony is is that we already spend plenty compared to other countries and in many cases get worse results.

We could adapt Japanese or Korean systems for teaching math and science, but that would be way too creative.

[1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.... [2] https://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/money-cant-buy-genius

[blasteye]

Property taxes only make up 1/4th the school budget in CA.

Also let's do some math shall we. California has 12.3% illegal immigrant student population. Remove them and the same funds that currently exist would be funding 87.7% the current student population.

California currently spends $8,694/student. If you remove the illegal immigrants that becomes 8,694/0.877 = ~9913/student. Not great but a $1219/student gain in funds isn't shabby either. FYI california has ~6 Million k-12 students, or in other words the illegals are costing tax payers 6.66 Billion/year in k-12 education.

Now reducing our student population by 12.3% would also mean reducing the number of schools. There's likely even greater savings as not everything scales horizontally / sub-horizontally.

https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays https://edsource.org/2017/how-does-california-rank-in-per-pu...

[CodeWriter23]

Gentrification also impacts the public school system. The highly-acclaimed elementary school down the block from me is going to lose a ton of money as their Title I enrollment is going to drop below 55%. That’s code for the poor folk being pushed out by gentrification.

[Pigo]

>most vulnerable immigrant population

This strategic description really grinds my gears.

[jrs95]

Do you actually think California is trying so hard to keep these people out of altruism? This is clearly just an electoral strategy. And there’s no way that with such large numbers of a very poor foreign population that it isn’t going to disrupt institutions and daily life in California.

And that isn’t a moral judgement of any of those individuals, it’s just a reality that negative social conditions have a big impact on schools in particular. The wealthier schools aren’t just doing better because they have more money per student, they’re doing better because the kids that go there have a better social environment. You could pour 5x the money into the worst schools in the country and you wouldn’t be able to make a big improvement because the schools are not the root cause of the terrible social conditions in those communities.

[bufferoverflow]

I doubt the language is a problem, young kids pick it up extremely fast. I, myself, moved to the US in my 20's, and had no major problem assimilating. For the first few months I didn't speak English, my father would help me everywhere. But then I had to go to college, took ESL classes for a semester, and then started taking normal college classes.

I doubt it's poverty, I grew up very very poor (as many of my classmates did). Didn't stop me from getting good education.

[blasteye]

Test scores show otherwise: http://laschoolreport.com/latinos-and-english-learners-are-b...

The majority of LA's Latino / Illegal Immigrant student body failed their standardized tests.

66% failed english language arts

76% failed math

And Latino's also had ~5% more kids failing than the average of LA's Scores. Its a fair argument that removing this population from the schools increase the % of kids who pass these tests by more than 5%.

" The percentage of LA’s Latino students who met or exceeded state academic expectations this year:

34 percent in English language arts, less than 1 percentage point higher than in 2016 24 percent in math, less than 1 percentage point higher than in 2016 The district’s overall average this year was 39.55 percent in English language arts and 29.86 in math. The percentage of Latino students in California who met or exceeded standards this year:

26.05 percent in English language arts, the same as in 2016 16.89 percent in math, slightly lower than in 2016 The state’s overall average this year was 48.56 percent in English language arts and 37.53 percent in math. "