Posted on 02/23/2011 8:19:15 PM PST by Red Badger
There's been a factoid making the rounds during the Wisconsin union standoff that you may have seen. I'm not sure what the ultimate source of the factoid is, but here's the meat of it as reiterated by a blogger for The Economist: Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina – 50th North Carolina – 49th Georgia – 48th Texas – 47th Virginia – 44th If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. Now, aside from the factoid, if true, providing no real insight into whether collective bargaining is good or bad for education -- there are myriad variables at work other than collective bargaining, none of which does this control for -- but the factoid itself is highly dubious. Again, it is hard to find the original source for this, but I looked up 2009 ACT and SAT state rankings, and at the very least it seems highly unlikely that Virginia ranks 44th out of all states According to the ACT ranking, for instance, Virginia places 22nd, and on the SAT (assuming the linked to list is accurate -- I'm doing this fast), it ranked 33rd. It's hard to see how those would be combined for a 44th place overall
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Yes, but in Texas we have to deal with the huge influx of illegals who not only don’t speak the language, but don’t give a damn about making their children learn what they are supposed to learn in the free public school systems.
Add to that issue the Katriana students who were significantly behind students in our state so much so that in the Houston area they had to be given remedial work just to get up to standard in Houston, then I’m surprised Texas doesn’t rank dead last.
Even if Wisconsin were near the top (and it is not, apparently), it would have been the private-school students who got the good scores and the government-school students who dropped out without taking the test.
It is possible that the minority students in those south east states are encouraged to take the SATs because those districts are mined for possible ethnic studies candidates for top universities all over the county.
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Several states depress their average ACT score by the same means — requiring all HS students to take it.
Another thing that makes these comparisons pointless is the fact that states rank higher on the test (ACT or SAT) that is not normative among colleges and universities in the state and neighboring states. The best scores on the SAT are from states in the Midwest where local colleges all require the ACT, and similarly, coastal states do well on the ACT.
Why? Only motivated students who want to go to a specific school outside their home region take the “other” test, thus skewing the scores higher.
The SAT is used in lieu of the MEA (Maine Educational Assessment) at the high school level, I believe.
The MEA is done in 4th and 8th grade and the SAT is used in High School for assessment purposes.
It does skew the reults, as you say, but there was a 'method to the madness' regarding the SAT requirement for Maine high school students.
On another note, the majority of Wisconsin students take the ACT rather than the SAT. Wisconsin is # 18 on the ACT Average Scores by State list. I regard this as a better indicator of Wisconsin educational perfromance than the SAT scores, which only a low percentage of Wisconson students take.
Maine, which only has 10% of its high school students take the ACT, is #5. I suspect that if only college bound Maine students took the SAT the reults would be similar, proving your point.
It's a self selecting sample and says nothing significant about the quality of education. No more valid than an on line polling question.
Some states had 100% of students taking the ACT and I'd assume the state paid for those tests if they have 100% participation. You would expect the overall score to be lower with everyone from 160 I.Q. to 70 I.Q. taking the same test.
Just this past week, my daughter asked her “economics” teacher where the money came from to pay for stimulus. At first he told her, “air, trees, I don’t know”. When she pressed further, he told her it was not something that was appropriate to be discussed in this class. When she told him her parents informed her that it was a combination of borrowing and printing money which resulted in inflation and a huge deficit, he told her that she was given incorrect information.
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please tell me this is a public school, so we can voucher them out of existence
Just so everyone knows, many of the southern states “appear” to be worse. This is deceiving.
Most of the Northern states tend to “not include” students who are in “resource categories” or special needs, which makes their numbers look better.....
My state include all students....which makes us appear at the bottom....
Actually I just ran charts and would post but I’m somewhat posting challenged regarding objects - (something for me to study). anyway -— I ran 2009 sat and 2010 act scores and participation vs $/student.
For the SAT there was maaaybe a 50 point improvement trend worst to highest based on $/student, but very noisy data - at first glance trend line looks flat so no majore improvement for the amount of $ change.
For ACT the trend was actually down about 2 points (much greater impact since that is nearly 10% of the average score of 20-24) as the $s went up, but still some noise so only minimal statistical impact.
Participation for both vs $/student was alsoall over the place tons of noise - though standard trend line (not regression mind you) showed SAT participation went down with $ and ACT went up, but that didn’t suprise me as the SAT tends to be used more in the Midwest and West than the ACT (more NE, East, South)and corresponding liberal vs conservative bastions. In the end it didn’t mean anything.
What did suprise me was that as the participation rate goes down for both tests the scores go up dramatically. TO me this only makes practical sense because those who participate want to go to college and have already done the prework to reach that goal. It also indicated that for those states with 100% participation on the ACT and there were several, then their requirement for an ACT test harms their overall average and there is no improvement for the cost as shown earlier with the other chart.
To me it basically says that you cannot mandate, buy, or create a persons desire to achieve - it must come from within. You can instill that desire through coaching and setting an example, but even then the desire is self generated.
The easiest way to post your charts would be to convert them to GIFs or PNGs (there are several ways, including simple screenshots), then uploading them to some place like http://imageshack.us/.
You'll get a URL that you can use to embed the image in an FR posting. Use this posting guide for instructions: HTML Sandbox 2011
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