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Airedale comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong Discussion

65 Post author: ThinkOfTheChildren 08 April 2013 09:29PM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 09 April 2013 05:35:27AM 2 points [-]

Thanks!

That link did imply that the 10% of funding that is federal is structured as grants, which surprised me. Though it's not clear that it means exactly the same thing as in this post.

that portion of resources that is actually up for grabs [are grants]

That sounds close to a tautology to me. Aren't grant applications the way that one grabs resources that are up for grabs? (OK, I can think of other examples, like specializing in disabled students, but...)

Comment author: Airedale 09 April 2013 04:34:34PM 3 points [-]

That sounds close to a tautology to me.

Yeah, I didn't phrase that very clearly. My thinking was drawing a distinction between (1) what may be the smaller portion of resources that is always up for grabs (and that is perhaps mainly grants) and (2) the larger portion of resources that is not discretionary in the same way because it is awarded by the government without the competitive grant application process. Of course, there may still be opportunities to also influence how that larger portion of resources is distributed, e.g., lobbying or maybe gaming the system to affect the distribution in some way.