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

The debate is not whether the SAT is a good indicator of whether someone is gonna go on to be successful (I think it's a perfectly fine indicator). The debate is whether it is fair to compare state school systems based on a test given to private and home school kids (a point I have made before). 20% of SAT/ACT takers in Wisconsin go to private school and 10% in Texas, yet JV tries to compare the two public school systems based some data set derived from one of these tests. ridiculous.

You are given a data set of a test taken by only public school students of the same age at the exact same time across the country. The only reason the government administers the NAEP is to measure school performance against standards in reading,math,science. And yet liberals choose to base conclusions about public school systems off the SAT instead. That's simply dishonest.

Texas does great with drop out rates:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_113.asp

White students: Texas 1.8% (national average 2.8%)
Black students: Texas 6.3% (national average 6.7%)
Hispanic students: Texas 5.3% (national average 6.0%)

 

And what's the % of those kids being able to do college level work?

 

Well since Texas does better than the national average on the government administered test given to all public school state systems (NAEP), better than most states I would assume. But that would be guessing.

 

please educate yourself

Many in college lack basic skills

For Texas, it's a $200 million-a-year problem

 

admittedly, I skimmed the article, but I saw nothing that disproves my guess. You would need to compare the money spent per high school graduate relative to what other states are spending per high school graduate (or something along those lines). Actually the information you are wanting would be even more complicated than that. All this article says is a lot of Texas high school graduates aren't ready for college as far as I can see. It does no comparing to other states, but again I skimmed.

 

The point being using graduation rates as a sign of educational accomplishment is probably not the best indicator of success.

 

I can only speak of my own experience. Growing up generally taking magnet classes, I had the misfortune of attending a semester of regular English(or perhaps History?) in 9th grade due to some school error.

In that regular class, the teacher taught in a way you'd think she was talking to r****ded kids. The materials were all things I already learned in middle school. The students were all asking questions and thinking in manners befitting of 5th graders.

And I'm someone who was average in college. Someone who felt a sizable difficulty spike advancing from high school to college. Yet, compared to the students at my high school who didn't attend advanced classes, I felt like a genius. I think it was at that time when I truly realized how badly educated kids are in general.

 

It's a shame and Arne Duncan has a point; the state spends more on a jail inmate than it does on a student in public school. I've been in seven different school districts. The last two were almost night and day; Katy ISD actually challenged me a lot (of course, I had great individually talented teachers that actually gave a damn); Klein ISD only did so a little.

What really hurts is seeing the disappointing scores on the SAT for my fellow black students.

Me: 630 / 710 / 610
TX: 424 / 437 / 417

OUCH!

 

How well do the kids who dropped out of this guys school system he was superintendent of do in college? My guess is dropouts do much worse than graduates.

 

The point is that dumb-ing down the standards in order to have people graduate isn't really saying a lot about the graduates. Yes it says that they may do better than drop outs, but that's not really what they should be compared against.

 

Well the argument is that we're not spending enough per high school graduates because of Perry.... so Perry decides to screw the students of the, make them less prepared to compete with rest of the country (and with globalization rest of the world) and you're ok with that?

 

Electrical Engineering program in UT drops out a lot of students, is that a poor curriculum?

 

But Texas is doing better than the national average by far on the NAEP which is described thusly:

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/

So if Texas is doing better than other states on test assessments, than 'dumbing down' is not whats causing them to beat the national average on drop out rates.

 

I don't know about that, a high school in the town over cut art, music, and shop for an extra gym class for athletes.

 

It measure's 4th and 8th grade right? What about HS? Also what's the participation rate? Is it mandatory? I'd also like to see the data split by 4th and 8th grade for a trend view.

 

dropping out is worse than graduating.
This guys own school system is notorious for high drop out rates.
This guy should stfu.

 

Wouldn't this be an indicator that our educational system sucks bananas? If Texas kids actually learned math and sciences properly in grade school, maybe they wouldn't be dropping out of college?

 

You have to look at the percentage of freshman who actually graduate high school, not at the gamed "drop-out rate."

Whenever a kid drops out, they're asked, "Are you planning on getting your GED?"
"No."
"You're gonna get your GED, right?"
"No."
"What's that, you're going to get your GED?"
"---- you!"
"We'll put you down as 'Yes.'"

If they can mark a drop-out as saying he's going to get his equivalency diploma, without ever actually following up to see if he follows through, ipso facto he's no longer a drop-out. Problem solved: it's no longer the schools that have failed him, it's the difficulty of licking the stamp on the GED application.

Texas school districts historically do this to game the system, and make their pitiful graduation rates seem better than they actually are.