FROM CRADLE TO CAREER — A study on success rates in various states has just been published and should trigger a lot of resentment between the citizens and state governments.
qc07_supptables.pdf (application/pdf Object) (Caution link opens a PDF) — Here is the main report in its entirelty.
The real Golden State is Virginia, where children are most likely to become well-educated adults with steady, high-paying jobs, according to researchers from the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center in Washington, D.C.
Children born in New Mexico were deemed least likely to succeed.
The researchers stacked up all the states and the District of Columbia against 13 measures of success, ranging from parents’ employment and English fluency to children’s test scores and graduation rates.
Top 10 States where Children can be assured of a successful life:
1. Virginia
2. Connecticut
3. Minnesota
4. New Jersey
5. Maryland
6. Massachusetts
7. New Hampshire
8. Wisconsin
9. Nebraska
10. Vermont
And I should ention that these are the states (above) where most of the Dvorak Uncensored Readers are located (seriously).
Here are the bottom 10 or the worst places with the most dummies and offering little chance for success amongst children raised there. Since Washington DC is listed you get 51 competitors. Here are the worst.
42. South Carolina
43. Nevada
44. West Virginia
45. Arkansas
46. Mississippi
47. Tennessee
48. Texas
49. Arizona
50. Louisiana
51. New Mexico
California, a state which as a stand-alone would be the world’s 7th largest economy showed up at number 34th, pathetic considering the wealth. A good new account of this report is here.
Well, I live in Northern VA, and I can say right off the bat that VA pumps a lot of resources into its community colleges and other workforce development programs. It also doesn’t hurt that most people up here are sucking on the federal government’s tit.
Damn the ‘Dirty South’!
Just saw the map. I’m wondering if Indian reservations were included. Since they are supposed to be a sovereign nation apart from the US.
Coming from the UK to CA, and having my mother-in-law work as a teacher.. I can honestly say I’m shocked at the school system here. The whole system, from funding down to the administrative level is very, very, messed up.
Which is a shame, because most of the teachers are really trying to do well with what they have. Oakland schools are a great example of this… some fantastic teachers – woeful support and budgeting.
4. They probably are, which is why New Mexico fared so low. There is not much to do on the Rez here after getting out of school except work in Natural gas industry or one of the casinos.
Woooo so all that time I spent in school hasn’t been a waste
#5, Gregory
Very true. My own assessment is the American aversion to paying taxes. I think most school systems are underfunded and classroom activities and supplies suffer as a result. Then the right wing nut neo-cons get on their soap box and blame the unions, teachers, kids, parents, and Democrats.
Yes there are quite a few good teachers. There are also a few not so good too. Same as there are quite a few good lawyers, cops, and pilots to go along with those who are not so good.
Isn’t it obvious that the rankings are reflective of the civil war. The south lost that war and they haven’t learned anything since.
10. Total bullshit.
#6: There’s are other problems in NM. It’s thinly populated, and most decent paying jobs are in the major cities and towns (Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Farmington, Los Alamos, Roswell, Alamogordo, Carlsbad), and most of those jobs require a high school diploma or a college degree.
Many people live in rural areas where there aren’t many jobs, and there are deep cultural reasons why people stay in those rural areas where their family is, instead of moving to where the jobs are. There is also an attitude here that education isn’t necessary to get a job, so there isn’t much push from the parents to have the kids finish high school and maybe go to college. Change that attitude and maybe NM will do better in the rankings.
#9 – Minnesota’s test scores are dropping recently. Fully 50% of the state budget goes to schools – yet the schools are crying for money every single year. The aversion to taxes is that the overall bill is already too high – especially when compared to what we get back out of the system.
School systems tend to be a bottomless pit with little or no accountability when it comes to money. Institution some kind of accountability and tying pay to merit would be a good start that would give much greater return than simply throwing more money down the hole.
the American aversion to paying taxes. That would be me. My taxes are the single largest bill i pay every year. You may not like paying for wars but I am just as offended that I have to support a public school system and the private Good one I send my kids to.
Mr fusion
The schools(at least in Texas) are very well funded,(8 billion from the Tx lottery alone in the last 5 years) but the funding is wasted by the unions to some extent but mostly by the bureaucracy my sister is employed by a Texas school system (and she should not be )she is an attendance clerk and works about 3 hours a day in an elementary school office with 4 other secretaries a principle (who makes over 100k a year ) an asst principle and a nurse ( this in an elementary school of 600 students) each teacher has an aid and they blew $250k 3 years ago to get all new dells to replace the 3 year old ibms that the students only use to type reports and occasionally surf the highly censored web. The school administration in this town of 250k people with about 3 dozen school takes up a building 1 block long and 3 stories high
Now Mr fusion explain to me how this is money well spent. I agree the teachers are underpaid, but the union has created so many administration jobs that the entire budget is eaten by bureaucracy with none left for the students and teachers
You guys read this crap and argue from the standpoint as if it had any validity. If it validates your prejudices (like #10) you feel your life and views are vindicated.
Total BS is right.
Gee, what’s the best ice cream, I really need to know.
Yes! Im a dvorak.org/blog reader from NM I must be special. I may be the smartest person in NM. John?
#14 the American aversion to paying taxes. That would be me. My taxes are the single largest bill i pay every year. You may not like paying for wars but I am just as offended that I have to support a public school system and the private Good one I send my kids to.
Too bad…
I don’t have any kids in school and my taxes pay for schools too. But I can’t imagine ever for a minute begrudging the dollars spend on education. Is there any aspect of your life not touched in some way by someone other than yourself?
Do you use a bank? Do cops patrol your neighborhood? Will firemen respond to a fire at your house? Do you run a business that hires employees? Do you have clients? Do you need a doctor for any medical conditions?
That we in society be educated is in all of out interests… You should count yourself fortunate that you can send your children to what you percieve is a better school. They will likely have an edge in life. But they, and you, are screwed if everyone else is without education.
#17 well, probably, except for Eideard.
#13, as a resident of Minnesota and an educational researcher I have to point out that most people have no idea how to evaluate standarized tests. While “test scores dropping in Minnesota” may sell some newspapers as a headline it doesn’t mean that schools are failing to educate. Education is a very complex thing and one which is certainly not easy to assess, it may indeed be so difficult and expensive to assess that it’s not worth it.
Many people, such as yourself and the fine governor of Minnesota, talk about accountability for schools but no one has a realistic plan to hold them accountable. If you have such a plan I for one would love to hear it. In my field of educational research we do a lot of assessment of teaching methods, etc but even these studies only measure a few very precise things and have an enormous potential to be used incorrectly.
I maintain that education is probably the most expensive investment that a society can make. The costs of education are well hidden among various probrams and budgets from the local level through the national level and I believe that this is in part because if taxpayers really knew how much it cost to adequately educate the average student from Kindergarten through high school they would question if it is worth it.
It was, if your name is not Senor!!
I didn’t realize Texas was THAT bad and here all along I thought I was an underachiever. sigh
Since they used “Linguistic Integration” as one criterion… Why didn’t they use religiosity as another?
Adding to #23
Or perhaps the level of drug abuse? After all… potheads aren’t very productive… 😉
#16 – Ben & Jerry’s
If you don’t know, it comes from Vermont
Usually South Carolina lies at the bottom of these lists, so hey, we’re not doing that bad. Like many other southern states we’re host to a large immigrant (on both sides of the legal fence) population, with all of it’s attendant problems.
One of the biggest problems here is the quiet plantation mythos, a large, unspoken resistance to any sort of positive growth industry. This keeps the local labor pool poor, and the well off living large in their mini-plantations. Several years ago Colleton County spent several million dollars on an alleged “industrial park”, said park sitting today unkempt and overgrown with no industry pumping dollars into the local economy.
23,
Interesting that the guy railing aginst drugs goes by the handle “Jägermeister “. To each their own, I guess. Just don’t call the kettle black.
John
I think there is a mistake. Arkansas should be 39 and Alabama should be 45. Just don’t tell [music]. You might also want to show that several of the states were tied like South Carolina and Kentucky. You don’t want any of the southern states to fell left out now do you.
4th from the bottom is Texas. And it is the worst state for “linguistic integration.” This helps to explain a few questions I had about a key world leader.
Pardon me while I put food on my family.
#27
Did I rail against drugs?
Doesn’t Bush come from texas (no.48)? That explains a lot !
#20 – [The costs of education are well hidden among various probrams and budgets from the local level through the national level and I believe that this is in part because if taxpayers really knew how much it cost to adequately educate the average student from Kindergarten through high school they would question if it is worth it.] – if it really costs that much is that not valid question for people to ask? Every expenditure in life is a cost/benefit issue.
I agree that accountablility in the classroom is a hard thing to measure but at least the attempt should be made. Tenure making someone essentially unfirable is not a good thing. Accountability also extends to fiscal responsibility. In my own district, they’re whining about possibly having to kill some sports and one of the bands, yet a few years ago, instead of simply building a school, they chose to build an opulent palace.
Simply throwing more money at a broken system doesn’t fix things. Money brings up the tax issue. Paying a reasonable amount of taxes for something is OK. However, when you add federal, state, local, property, sales, etc. taxes together, the average American is paying in almost half their income. I find that unreasonable.
#18 – Parents get tax breaks for their kids. This has the side effect of making childless people pay more taxes toward education than the people with kids who are actually using the schools. Does this make sense? To sound like a liberal for a moment, I don’t think this is “fair”.
I don’t have all the answers, but the teachers unions will tell us we shouldn’t even be asking the questions – we should just shut up and hand over more money.