actually basso posted this in another thread as in that thread basso proceeds to post videos posted in this thread
You can choose to not take race into consideration if you want, but you would be being willfully ignorant. You can look at the test scores and see that whites out perform minorities regardless of state, so to ignore an obviously relevant feature (racial demographics) when comparing states' school systems is being willfully ignorant.
Again It shows some test scores, but it doesn't change the fact that their average ACT test scores are 3rd in the nation and ahead of Texas.
The author of this piece is being dishonest. Krugman doesn't at all draw the conclusions attributed to him. Here's the original column: It's a column about Republican rhetoric not matching deeds. In other words, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy heightened because it involves screwing over kids while appealing to the image of kids. The only implied mention of the Wisconsin stand-off (though it could also apply to a number of other states) is this parenthetical sentence: Notice he doesn't compare anything about education achievement. He merely makes the observation that people who blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems are talking out of their ass, as the author of the basso/tallanvor piece is doing when he suggests Krugman made a comparison he did not. By the way, one outcome of the current Texas budget situation is that my hometown of Huntsville should do very well in the future. We'll have good prisons when other towns won't have decent schools.
Another Rasmussen poll out this morning. 6 in 10 Wisconsin voters disapprove of Gov Walker and his job performance. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub.../wisconsin_governor_walker_43_approval_rating Keep up the good work there Scott!
Ignoring the Krugman part, the study that tallanvor posted does merit a further look. One of the dangers of comparing topline numbers of school performance is that it ignores the quality of the student. For example, a school that takes only smart students is going to perform better than a school that takes not-smart kids. But does that mean the first school is better? No. This is one of the problems when people compare private to public schools and argue that the public school system sucks - the reality is that they have to deal with a different student population than schools that self-select. On the surface, tal's study does show Texas schools to be holding their own, at the very least, if not overperforming Wisconsin. It does make a key assumption: that race is the driving force behind quality of intelligence. That is, it implicitly makes the assumption that its harder to educate black & hispanic students and therefore having more black & hispanic students makes the top line number lower. Basically, the argument is that because Wisconsin is more white, it SHOULD have better scores, but the reality is that the scores, demographically adjusted, aren't as high as they should be relative to Texas. Whether that assumption is valid is more complex. I would argue that economics plays a larger role and that the racial correlations are actually a side effect of minorities being poorer in general. I would love to see the same analysis conducted by socioeconomic status rather than race before generating any ultimate conclusions. I'd also want to see the comparison between more states than Texas and Wisconsin to see if there's a true union vs non-union correlation. As a result, I think they were too quick to extrapolate the conclusions that they did for political reasons. But the basic idea of the study is fairly sound - topline numbers can often be misleading and are worth analyzing in more detail.
Krugman claims Texas schools are poor compared to other schools. They aren't. In fact they are far superior to the national average. What is dishonest about what Iowahawk posted?
what is the sociaeconomic status of wis residents vs. texas. we often here how well the texas economy does so texas is kind of a statistical outlier if you ask me without looking at numbers. I understand other poorer southern states with large minority populations doing poorly on education statistics. does it mean that texas's white population is that much more wealthy than its minority population?
Those are exactly the kinds of things we'd need to know. We'd also need to know the distribution of the wealth in each place. For example, if one state has 10% ultra wealthy people and 90% poor people, that would generate different educational results than a state with 30% sorta wealthy and 70% average, even though the average per-capita income might be the same. I would be curious to see a parallel to tal's study that broke down how students do at various family income levels (maybe adjusted for Cost of Living?). That takes out the issue of different wealth distributions.
The other issue involves the comparison number used in the basso/tall piece. Regarding education numbers, Krugman only mentions HS graduation rates and dropout rates. The Economist factoid involves SAT/ACT scores, which is not the best measure as it only involves kids wanting to go to college (about 51% of Texas HS grads go to college, 58.5 in Wisconsin) and not all. The basso/tall counter to these points is a national survey of 4th and 8th graders. Apples to oranges. A lot happens to kids between the ages of 13 and 18. One of the points Krugman is making is that Texas is shorting the HS kids.
Agreed - the comparisons the two competing views are trying to make use different measures and different data. They both make interesting points and interesting things to look at, but they don't necessarily counter or disprove each other.
[unnecessary bragging] By the way, my daughter just completed the 7th grade version of the Oregon state achievement test and came out with the highest score in her school... she missed just one question.[/unnecessary bragging] Makes me feel like I'm doing something right.
I don't know if this has been brought up (haven't read the entire thread) but comparing ACT/SAT scores for WI and TX may be problematic for another reason. I graduated HS in Houston in 95 and at the time I took both the SAT and ACT since I was considering colleges in the mid-west. Probably 100% of my classmates took the SAT but I would guess only 20% or so took the ACT. I would guess that in WI the ACT is more popular than the SAT. Thus I imagine that TX students prepare more for the SAT and WI students prepare more for the ACT.
Except that would also be ignoring the makeup of Wisconsin as being much more white than Texas and if we just go by that then Wisconsin is still out performing Texas among white students. As I said earlier I do find this line of argument very interesting regarding racial differences. Do you then agree that standardized testing is racially biased against minorities and that education in America is generally biased against minorities?
If you read the article and the link I posted in my response it does give comparative information regarding dropout rates across all states. I agree with your post in general and I think more info is needed before drawing a definitive conclusion. That said just taking what facts were presented in the Iowahawk article and agreeing with his reasoning Wisconsin isn't some education hell hole being destroyed by the teachers' unions.
