Here IowaHawk utterly and completely demolishes a Kruggie rant.
To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.
Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools - especially minority students.
You can read the whole thing at the link.HT: VerumSerum
2 comments:
Which proves the old maxim that "figures can lie and liars can figure..."
Of course the teachers and their unions, following Krugman, will say that they need more money, as usual and why they have opposed compensation based on performance and results. There must be a reason why parochial schools consistently produce better results - and with a lot less money....
I actually tend to disagree with Krugman on this issue. And his strong suit is trade economics and most macro econ. I would say he's a far cry from "expert" on these types of issues.
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