Posted on 06/22/2011 8:13:43 AM PDT by george76
When it come to excellence in education, red states rule—at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek.
Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all over the country to find the best public schools in the country.
The results make depressing reading for the teacher unions: The very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states.
Three of the nation’s ten best public high schools are in Texas—the no-income tax, right-to-work state that blue model defenders like to characterize as America at its worst. Florida, another no-income tax, right-to-work state long misgoverned by the evil and rapacious Bush dynasty, has two of the top ten schools.
...
It is becoming harder and harder to find evidence of any kind that teachers’ unions help either taxpayers or kids; surveys like these hasten the day when real reform comes to the American educational system.
The rise of the red states is one of those stories that the mainstream media—which views the world through blue-tinted lenses—doesn’t like to think about.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Products of the Dallas and Houston school districts. The only other Texas school in the top 25 is from Austin.
So the top schools comes from the most Liberal cities in the state?
What MrB said.
This is why our education system won’t ever be improved much. Too many people of certain demographics place little value in learning, and those that do are more interested in indoctrination than actual education. No amount of money will change that.
A full voucher system (similar to Sweden) MIGHT but that’s another subject.
Regardless, NO politican of either party wants to stand in front of potential voters and say “the schools suck because YOU don’t teach your kids to want to learn.”
Our current district had a sizable cadre of housewife volunteers at the school on that particular day sorting boxtops and coupons to buy some of the extras the district needed.
The other (Democrat leaning) district was engaged in a similar activity but had little in the way of parental involvement even though it was more compact and many of the parents could walk there.
Californians should be asking why they went from one of the best rated education states in the country to the bottom of the heap.
I think where bad schools do exist in red states, it’s due to a throwback Appalachian/Rural South farmer mentality towards education that seems to stick in some small communities.
Oddly, some of the best cities to live in for a conservative professional looking for a decent job but a family and business friendly environment are liberal cities in conservative states.
THANKS!!!!
Hehehehe not a single MI school I’ll betcha!
school Ping
They call it Ole Miss.
It’s strange and distressing on how schools are percieved as being for the benefit of the teacher rather than the student.
It’s a lesson how if the basic priorities aren’t right, then nothing is right.
1) ALL government owned and run schools in this nation are GODLESS in their worldview. Simply by attending children learn to think and reason godlessly. They must merely to cooperate in the classroom and turn in assignments. ( Christian teachers who attempt to sneak in a little Christian philosophy or belief teach the children that Christians are sneaky.)
2) ALL government schools in this nation are socialist-funded, compulsory, and collectivist managed by the voter mob. Merely by attending children learn to be comfortable with taking money from their neighbor by government force, government compulsion, and collectivist and voter mob management of their lives.( And...Now with Death Panels the voting mob collective will dictate how they will die.)
3) Nearly all government owned and run schools look like prisons, treat the children like prisoners, and the government tramples **ALL** of their First Amendment Rights. Merely by attending children learn to be compliant prisoners of the state. ( Are the sheep-like people in the TSA lines proof enough of that?)
Agree
Also note that there is another Texas school in the top 10 - in Irving, Texas. Once again, this TOO is a charter/magnet school. My nephew goes to the school in Irving!
Missed Irving in the list. Congratulations to your nephew.
That means that three top 10 schools are from Dallas county.
" Central, the second-oldest continuously public high school in the United States (if one does consider schools that were initially private it's the twenty-seventh oldest public high school), was founded in 1836 and is a four-year university preparatory magnet school."
Same with the only other urban school in PA (Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy). Many of the rest are in the affluent suburbs outside Philly.
Yup.
Another (sad but true) statistic...even within school districts, the more Whites/Asians and fewer Blacks/Hispanics, the better the school does.
It is likely that these children in the paragraph above have parents who are doing the BEST job of AFTERSCHOOLING!!!! (Yeah! I am shouting and jumping up and down!)
Where are the controlled studies that separate out what is learned IN THE HOME, due to the efforts of the parents and children, from that which is acquired in the institutional classroom. Huh? I think this would be a VERY important factoid to know. Yet,...As many times as I have posted this question no teacher or professor of education has ever ( not even once!) proved a link to these studies!
We could be spending a hundred thousand to HALF A MILLION dollars per child from K-12 to warehouse children in prison-like buildings ( mis-named “schools”) and they may NOT be learning anything at all there. I could very well be that if a child learns anything at all it is due entirely to the efforts of his parents and the child, himself, IN THE HOME!
It has been my anecdotal observation that academically successful homeschoolers and institutionalized children share very **SIMILAR** home habits and values. And....BOTH groups spend about the same amount of time in formal study AT THE KITCHEN TABLE!!!!!
My conclusion: Afterschooling is responsible for 99.99999% of anything any institutionalized child learns. The only thing the government schools do is send home a taxpaid curriculum! It is the parents and kids who are doing the hard work IN THE HOME!
Please read post #38.
Yep! It's entirely due to the efforts of the parents and children, themselves, IN THE HOME. It is called “afterschooling”!
Full disclosure - I live in Texas and believe we have excellent schools.
However - For this article to have been fair, it should have excluded the "Magnet" schools. A fair ranking should include only schools whose attendance is largely based on residence zones, rather than the schools that are able to cherry-pick their students. Some of magnet schools cannot turn away people, but the population is self-selected. If you or your parents care enough to at least try to get into the magnet school, then you are miles ahead of the rest of the population who do not.
Count only neighborhood-based schools or it's not fair.
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