Former Harvard hoops star Duncan feels very, very badly for the children of Texas

I'll bite...

In what way are using scores from tests that are measuring readiness for college dishonest?

 

I have a great deal of experience with beginning college students who were educated in Texas high schools.

The vast majority of them are almost wholly unprepared.

 

http://www.politifact.com/texas/sta...-has-43rd-best-graduation-rate-united-states/

 

Perhaps he should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on the Chicago Public school system which performs much lower than Houston.

 

Not as good as it used to be.

Kind of like the Rockets....:grin:

 

SAT scores are a dishonest way of measuring whether or not students have been well-prepared to go to college?

And standardized tests of 4th graders and 8th graders are better? And, I find it curious -- if both data sets are to be believed -- that higher-performing white 8th graders, higher-performing black 8th-graders, and higher-performing hispanic 8-graders somehow aggregate to score pitifully on the SAT 4 years later. Perhaps Texan Asians are under-performing Asians nationwide to sink Texas' score?

Of all the tests we have our children take, the SAT easily has the most real-world impact on the student. If they do great on all these other tests but can't come through for the SAT, what does it matter? Comparing racial and economic subgroups is a good idea, but do it on SAT data at least.

You can find SAT data here: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/cb-seniors-2010

Scores on Critical Reading / Math / Writing (winner in bold)

White:
* TX: 525 / 543 / 509
* WI: 606 / 606 / 587

Black:
* TX: 424 / 437 / 417
* WI: 501 / 490 / 497

Mexican:
* TX: 453 / 475 / 443
* WI: 528 / 523 / 509

Maybe family income?

Income under $20k:
* TX: 421 / 446 / 414
* WI: 529 / 543 / 526

(Same story at $200k+, btw. Same story on breakdown by parent's education level.)

So, it seems to me that the blog you linked to chose badly (or carefully??) in using NAEP data when (if it was accurately presented) it doesn't seem to translate into any real-world success for the test-takers. Comparing Texas to Wisconsin, I couldn't find so much as a moral victory or consolation prize for my home state.

 

Was a student in the suburbs, and I never really had any major problems, aside from complete frustration with that stupid top 10% rule.

That's interesting. I never followed Texas politics ( definitely not as much as I follow Minnesotan ones), but my impression was always that Perry was the ideologue, while Dewhurst was the old-schooler trying to keep him on a leash. I'm sure I'm wrong, however.

 

I guess Texas must have the worst high school system to turn such good 8th graders into bad high school juniors/seniors. Or they played so much football in high school and banged their heads a few times too many. :grin:

 

good post, JV, interesting data. I'm curious, though, as to how population numbers impact scoring, both from a socioeconomic viewpoint and just from a size of the system viewpoint.

By which I mean, first, if Texas has just by the numbers a lot more people generally, and a lot more with family income under $20k than Wisconsin, for example, then one would expect it to be harder to get comparable scores. That is, do the scores correlate to stat size, and if so, how?

Not a free pass by any means, just a question...

 

I'm in Oregon. We have our own problems, notably a ridiculously short school year (we start on 9/7 this year) because of budget issues. Still, the system is run by fairly sane people and not too much of the crazy is taught here. Mostly, we have loggers and other manual laborers demanding vocational training for their kids, which leads to a deemphasis on classical learning, but we only have a few folks trying to overthrow Western Civilization by means of curriculum... though they seem to be gaining lately.

 

So California, Arizona, and New Mexico round out the bottom four?

 

Yes, the Texas population of test-takers is much, much bigger than the Wisconsin population. Still, I would think the sub-group populations are large enough in WI to have a statistically accurate number for comparison. Texas actually won comparing Native American scores (by a hair), but I think Wisconsin only had 36 test-takers in that category in the first place, so I paid it no mind.

But, yeah I imagine it's much harder to run a public education system in TX where you have a lot more kids to worry about, and more opportunities for some to be left behind. That's why I thought it was interesting that we even lag among rich students and students of graduate-level-educated children. Surely, these kids aren't being marginalized and neglected, but they still can't keep up with their peers in WI. Regardless, if there is a scale handicap in Texas, that's still on us. At the end of the day, a student (of any color or socio-economic background) is more likely to score well on the SAT (and therefore gain entrance at more prestigious univerisites, on the margin) coming out of the Wisconson system than the Texas system.

Looking at SAT data, I suppose another thing we could do is compare pre-Perry stats to Perry-era stats, but I don't think I want to take that kind of time.

 

It is a dishonest way to compare school systems. It doesn't take into consideration any relevant factors. It's the equivalent of saying shooting guard A is better than shooting guard B because A scores more points or his team won more games.

Those are self-confessed scores..... meaningless imo. There is no way to get the data you're looking for from the SAT or ACT. That's why the blog didn't use it.

 

Every child should get an Ipad and a sign-in id. They either complete the curriculum or they don't.



( practicing my new Ron Paul advocacy)

 

short school is no big deal when you rate that against social problems. With that in mind sounds like your children are in the perfect situation. Better than TX or CA at least

 

Hawaii, South Caronlina, DC and Maine. Maine gets almost 97 participation rate so that is probably why their numbers are so low. Only 53 percent of students take it in Texas.

Arizona and New Mexico have much lower participation rates than we do.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2010-sat-trends.pdf

 

Look, TX public schools suck. Any system that believes creation deserves to be an academic subject as far as how the earth was created, sucks.

CA where I teach also sucks. Some of their problems are different.

As far as the SAT and ACT being a good judge of students ready for college from state to state, it's not that bad. Even better than things like drop out rates and graduation rates.

Those will vary from state to state, and different states have different standards. Some are tougher than others. So those things will vary. The SAT and ACT are the same no matter what state.