(Thanks to Innerbrat for the original quote)
These included such positive attributes as per-pupil expenditures,
Understandable, but you can't buy an education. I've been in private schools that were worse than public schools. Per-pupil expenditures are a factor, but they really reflect a combination of the willingness of the state and the affluence of the state. Since per capita incomes in the Northeast are nearly double those of the Deep South, it is only to be expected that per-pupil expenditures would be similar in ratio.
public high school graduation rates,
Different areas have different graduation requirements. I know a few students at my high school who failed senior English because they didn't finish a paper that was twice as long as the Federal college requirement for a 4-year degree.
average class size,
Which has been shown to have precisely
zero effect on academic standings in studies.
student reading
Do they examine non-English reading proficiency for immigrant students? I went to a school that was ~60% non-immigrant, and we had everything from the typical (in Florida) Puerto Rican and Cuban to Chinese, Philippino, Kenyan, Norwegian...or do they just measure English proficiency, which would be higher in states like Vermont, which have very few non-native US people?
and math proficiency,
Agreed. Math is mostly universal (although a teacher of mine from Europe was taught a different way of writing division problems; I helped her learn the "American" way so she could get her teacher's certificate)
and pupil-teacher ratios.
How does this differ from class size?
States received negative points for high drop-out rates
Did they measure only drop-outs, or did they count transfers, also? My senior class had a roughly 10% drop-out rate, but we had nearly 50% if you include students that transferred in or out. Both suck, but the latter is much worse than the former
and physical violence.
I'll agree with this one, though it would have to be on an incidents per capita basis, since some school systems are much larger than others.
phong wrote:That's one problem: FL's DOE tends to waste money a lot. Like buying computers all the damn time. IMHO, they really should concentrate first on basic education then start adding more computers and such. (Says the person who went here.)
Hey, at least it wasn't
Orange County. No high school had over 79% pass the writing on the FCAT, although our reading was average, and our math 1 point below state average, though scores varied from 262-330 on the reading and 290-341 on the math (302 was average for reading and 320 for math). The year I took it we were above average on both.