What an annoying response. You link me an 18 page PDF and call it direct evidence? Did you even read what I said? I'm not arguing that greater math ability doesn't correlate to greater wealth! This issue boils down to wealthier neighborhoods getting more money to invest in better math education for their students. That's it! Are you claiming that all rich people are good at math? Or that only people good at math are rich? In your world, can there exist a neighborhood of wealthy people who are not good at math? I have no clue and frankly I'm done explaining myself here.
Your belief is wrong. All research on the subject tells us that spending has at most a small impact on test scores. I'd link you to PDFs but I know how you feel about that.
I think you're wrong, and that spending does have a huge impact on test scores; the PDF you link even supports that higher family income correlates with higher test scores. My argument assumes that wealthier families spend more than less wealthier ones.
I actually can't downvote you. And I wouldn't. Downvoting without responding is cowardly, or at least not conducive to the aim of a civilized discussion. Its the Hacker News equivalent to anonymous hate mail. They are like rumors, and lead to distrust and aversion to frank debate, everything we should try and avoid. If someone downvotes a comment that is ultimately upvoted, the downvotes should be reassessed against themselves or something. If Wikipedia had such a mechanism the whole community would break down. Its a bad feature.
School spending is not the only spending involved. A large cost, roughly equivalent to spending, of the family is that which is spent on providing a loving, supportive, positive, non-absent relationship within the family. This costs time away from work. This costs money cultivating relationships with intelligent people. This provides affluent children with more positive influences, positive role models, and less stress that lends to more focus on learning. They tend to invest more in their children, but its not to say that a wealthy family will invest as much as a poor family with more of a focus on education. The list goes on and on. Its not as if you need to be affluent to provide or invest in these things, its just more conducive.
