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Comment by GenerWork | Hacker News Reader

We need to call these articles what they are: a proposal to abolish the concept of homestead protection in the states that have them. The author claims homestead is the reason that California can't properly fund its school system, but this assumes that more money spent on education will always equal better results. If that was true, then California would rank higher in K-12 education than somewhere like Florida, which it doesn't [0].

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I agree that these are attempts to disrupt homestead protections in favor of unrestrained capital but Florida k-12 education results place Florida in the bottom 10 states and Californian is higher at #30.

Is that a null pointer in a list? :)

It is. The pointer is meant to be a citation for the fact that Florida public schools rank higher than California public schools, but since that is false (Florida is 41st, California 32nd) no such citation exists and the comment is correct not to include one.

I suppose you could say, the parent commenter, by failing to cite a source, has comprehensively cited all sources that support their statement. As you say, a null pointer.

> Florida is 41st, California 32nd

That seems to come from https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho....

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education, however, puts Florida at #22, and California at #38.

That feels like a wild swing, so I have no idea how these estimates are determined.

The NEA says, at least, that California is #2 in attendance, and Florida is #42. That sure feels significant: file:///private/tmp/2025_rankings_and_estimates_report.pdf

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