Republican States Have The Best Public Schools In The Country, By A Long Shot

[Anonymous]

http://www.businessinsider.com/shocking-red-states-have-the-best-public-schools-in-the-country-by-a-long-shot-2011-6

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/shocking-red-states-have-the-best-public-schools-in-the-country-by-a-long-shot-2011-6

From the linked article:

Definition alert: On this blog, a blue state is one that voted for John Kerry in 2004; red states cast their electoral votes for Bush.

Disingenuous Piece of Shit Alert: Why not use the 2008 results?

Anyway, the reason Red States appear to do slightly better in the tally of individual school excellence is that Red States are much better at segregating schools by race and income. Lot easier to get good test results and high IB/AP/etc participation rates when your student body is 99% white and upper middle-class. Blue States actually take things like social justice into consideration.

[Anonymous]

Exactly. If Washington DC decided to split the District two separate school districts and, oh, just happened to make the Anacostia the completely arbitrary boundary line between the two districts, do you think the various metrics of school success in the DC - West Unified School District would go up? Or down?

Keeping the legacy of racism alive has its benefits.

[Anonymous]

None of the info was verified, it's a big bag of B.S.

[Anonymous]

One of the highly rated schools in University High School in Irvine. I wonder if there's any connection to UCI, noted private enterprise.

Oh, wait.

[Anonymous]

I noticed most of the schools are magnet and gifted schools. Meaning the average kid doesn't attend them, and they are well funded at the expensive of other public schools.

[Anonymous]

Is it true you had to answer the Newsweek survey to be included in the results? If so, the results are useless. And if there's any state where I would not want to send my kids to public school, it's Florida. Which Newsweek has decided is one of the highest performing states. There's something wrong with this report.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it true you had to answer the Newsweek survey to be included in the results? If so, the results are useless. And if there's any state where I would not want to send my kids to public school, it's Florida. Which Newsweek has decided is one of the highest performing states. There's something wrong with this report.

How can you say such a thing? Apparently the lead on this was noted education expert Tina Brown.

Anyway, the originally linked article is yet more evidence that the One True Religion of Red State America is "confirmation bias".

[Anonymous]

The schools are just following the godly principle of "Them that's got shall get."

The red states didn't realize that Langston Hughes was being descriptive, not prescriptive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/shocking-red-states-have-the-best-public-schools-in-the-country-by-a-long-shot-2011-6

From the linked article:

Definition alert: On this blog, a blue state is one that voted for John Kerry in 2004; red states cast their electoral votes for Bush.

Disingenuous Piece of Shit Alert: Why not use the 2008 results?

Anyway, the reason Red States appear to do slightly better in the tally of individual school excellence is that Red States are much better at segregating schools by race and income. Lot easier to get good test results and high IB/AP/etc participation rates when your student body is 99% white and upper middle-class. Blue States actually take things like social justice into consideration.

I'd like to see some data on this. I went to public school in one of the reddest of the red states and the schools there were much better integrated than the schools here (the neighborhoods, too, but that's another issue). Yes, there were disparities between rich suburban schools and inner-city schools, but when I moved to DC, I found the disparities here shocking. I bet DC beats any other urban area in America with respect to the Balkanization of the school systems (even before the Charter School movement). Blue States may take social justice "into consideration," but they don't do anything about it. In fact, I suspect that the most public schools in Blue States (even in more affluent areas) test badly because the affluent opt out of the system entirely and send their kids to private school. Then they pat themselves on the back because the public schools in their area are equally bad for everyone. In the vast majority of Red State areas, the % of the population that goes to private school is very low. Everyone cares about the quality of the public school system.

[Anonymous]

In fact, I suspect that the most public schools in Blue States (even in more affluent areas) test badly because the affluent opt out of the system entirely and send their kids to private school. Then they pat themselves on the back because the public schools in their area are equally bad for everyone. In the vast majority of Red State areas, the % of the population that goes to private school is very low. Everyone cares about the quality of the public school system.

Really? I'm from north of the Mason-Dixon line, and when I moved down to Virgina (not Northern Virginia, but the red part of the commonwealth), I was astonished at the number of private schools. I always assumed they were founded as a response to the Brown v Board of Ed decision. The public schools where I grew up were a lot better than the public schools in heartland Virginia.

[Anonymous]

The weakness of the conservative author's claim is made apparent by this quote from the first paragraph of the Newsweek piece: "In total, more than 1,100 schools were assessed to produce the final list of the top 500 high schools." There are about 37,000 high schools in the US, so only about 3% of those schools submitted data.

Also, if you look at the comments to the original article, many of the conservative writer's own readers point out that he's over-reaching: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/20/blue-state-schools-the-shame-of-a-nation/comment-page-1/#comments

After a few of these comments, the author (Walter Russell Mead) responds: "Agreed — the studies are neither scientific nor complete. It’s still interesting to see that so many Southern schools in particular are eager to become excellent and to make their excellence known. Excellence in education is a difficult thing to define much less to measure — all these studies should be taken with a healthy dose of salt."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

In fact, I suspect that the most public schools in Blue States (even in more affluent areas) test badly because the affluent opt out of the system entirely and send their kids to private school. Then they pat themselves on the back because the public schools in their area are equally bad for everyone. In the vast majority of Red State areas, the % of the population that goes to private school is very low. Everyone cares about the quality of the public school system.

Really? I'm from north of the Mason-Dixon line, and when I moved down to Virgina (not Northern Virginia, but the red part of the commonwealth), I was astonished at the number of private schools. I always assumed they were founded as a response to the Brown v Board of Ed decision. The public schools where I grew up were a lot better than the public schools in heartland Virginia.

Actually, Virginia was noted for having many private day and boarding schools, usually segregated by sex. They were established well before any hint of integration or Brown vs Board of Ed decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it true you had to answer the Newsweek survey to be included in the results? If so, the results are useless. And if there's any state where I would not want to send my kids to public school, it's Florida. Which Newsweek has decided is one of the highest performing states. There's something wrong with this report.

Really? Once again, we have a DCUM poster "writing off" an entire southern state for one reason or another. Your bias is showing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/shocking-red-states-have-the-best-public-schools-in-the-country-by-a-long-shot-2011-6

From the linked article:

Definition alert: On this blog, a blue state is one that voted for John Kerry in 2004; red states cast their electoral votes for Bush.

Disingenuous Piece of Shit Alert: Why not use the 2008 results?

Anyway, the reason Red States appear to do slightly better in the tally of individual school excellence is that Red States are much better at segregating schools by race and income. Lot easier to get good test results and high IB/AP/etc participation rates when your student body is 99% white and upper middle-class. Blue States actually take things like social justice into consideration.

Just curious--do your children attend public school? If so, in which area?