Comparing Apples to Tall
January 7th, 2007 | by Craig |The IR has this article about a report that has Montana in the top 13 states for academic achievement.
Wow! That should be something to crow about, right?
Guess again, chumps. This is an education report, so you know that it’s tied to . . .
Child care and health insurance!
Further, I found this to be puzzling:
In particular, Montana lost points for the percentage of adults with steady employment or incomes above the national median, along with the percentage of children enrolled in kindergarten or preschool, or belonging to families with incomes at least twice the national poverty level.
Just a guess, but I imagine most Montana incomes are nowhere near the national median. so that’s not a good comparison, but I found it especially interesting that we lost points because of the percentage of kids enrolled in kindergarten and pre-school. This will, no doubt, cause for a call in increased funding for kindergarten and pre-school followed by mandatory pre-school.
Our governor is already pushing for all-day kindergarten, so it only seems logical that the next-step is mandated pre-school.
‘‘I’m always reading articles in the newspaper about how well Montana does in standardized tests,’’ she said. ‘‘But in the past few years, I’ve been seeing us drop. It’s not that we’re doing poorer — it’s that other states are doing better. And they’re the ones who are putting more money into education.’’
Or maybe it’s because they’re teaching to the tests to satisfy NCLB?
One Response to “Comparing Apples to Tall”
By Dani on Jan 7, 2007 | Reply
Until they compare cost-of-living with income, data like this will make no sense, and shouldn’t be used to make any kind of decisions, least of all funding ones.
I read a news article on one state’s funding of schools that rewarded districts which increased their per-capita spending with matching funds from the state. (sorry, can’t remember the link).
The districts in wealthier areas that could afford to spend more, did- and then got more matching funds. The fact that they were the least likely to need the money was evidently lost on the state legislature. I am sure it relied on some kind of similar statistics when it designed the program. Unless there are people in government who can really look at the data and the background, this kind of thing is just going to keep repeating itself.