America as Texas vs. California, Part III

http://blog.american.com/?p=9120

by cwan • 17 years ago

13 16 17 years ago

blog.american.com

nihilocrat2• 17 years ago

The quality of schools varies greatly from county to county, city to city. North Carolina has (apparently) excellent public schools... if you are in one of the major cities.

I looked at his original article and I'm thinking there's some kind of cost of living he's not accounting for. California has higher per capita income and spends more because it's extremely expensive to buy things there, pay teacher salaries, etc., compared to Texas. Effectively, California might be spending less. Maybe he's adjusting for that behind the scenes, but it's not obvious, it sounds like he is using raw figures.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

There is absolutely a cost of living problem in California, but who's fault is that? Houses in Texas cost 1/2 to 1/4 their California counterparts for a reason. The point is that Texas has held a pretty fiscally conservative line in the past decades while allowing a pretty liberal zoning policy, this allows them to afford proper education because teachers don't need crazy high pay for houses that are in short supply.

nihilocrat2• 17 years ago

That could be very true, but it's not the point he's trying to make. He is using spending figures as if they were on equal footing:

Just look at Texas, which spends 12 percent less per pupil with a similar kind of population but does significantly better educating its kids.

I see no discussion of cost of living, fiscal policies, or zoning.

doki_pen3• 17 years ago

The real question is, why is living in California so much more desirable then living in Texas? If Texas was as desirable, would they have some of the same problems? Ultimately a state(in the US) is made up of citizens, not land or government.

adzp2• 17 years ago

climate

ardit33• 17 years ago

I dunno. Why do people line up in a club and pay $20 cover to get in, while the pub next door has no cover, no lines, and cheaper/better beer?

CA is like that club, where the cover has gotten so expensive, yet the decor is getting old/outdated, and people are deciding it is not worth it anymore.

gyardley• 17 years ago

Living in California is more desirable than living in Texas? That might be true for you, but is it true in general?

If we accept the cost of a one-way U-Haul as a proxy for desirability, as http://blog.american.com/?p=9141 does, it suggests that many more people are moving from California to Texas than vice versa, which (if you believe people act on their desire) suggests that Texas is currently a more desirable place to live than California.

Anyone with time to do the work can get data on net inflows and outflows directly from the IRS, starting here:

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=212718,00.html

doki_pen3• 17 years ago

Why do we choose U-Haul and not housing costs? It seems obvious to me that everything is more expensive in California, including U-Haul. It's cherry picking.

jsm386• 17 years ago

Wait, they are holding up Texas schools as an example of great schools? This post references, along with the quote, this: "Despite this, Texas kids are one to two years of learning ahead of California kids of the same age. And blacks, whites, and Hispanics all do better in school in Texas than they do in California."

So they're two years ahead. Two years ahead of what exactly? After three all-day meetings and a blizzard of amendments and counter-amendments, the Texas Board of Education cast its final vote Friday on state science standards. The results weren't pretty.

The board majority amended the Earth and Space Sciences standards as well as the Biology standards (TEKS) with loopholes and language that make it even easier for creationists to attack science textbooks.

For example, the revised biology standard (7B) reflects two discredited creationist ideas that "sudden appearance" and "stasis" in the fossil record somehow disprove evolution. The new standard directs students to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records." Other new standards include language such as "is thought to" or "proposed transitional fossils" to make evolutionary concepts seem more tentative.

The changes will not immediately affect curricula in Texas high schools, but "the standards will affect standardized tests and textbooks," says Rosenau. Thanks to such laws as No Child Left Behind, ubiquitous standardized tests are central to measuring student progress and proficiency. Teachers teach to the test, notes Rosenau, and textbooks have to reflect this.

"Will publishers cave in to pressure from the Texas board to include junk science in their textbooks? It has happened before," says Scott. "But textbooks that please the Texas board will be rejected in other states. Publishers will have to choose between junk science and real science."

"Let's be clear about this," cautioned Scott. "This is a setback for science education in Texas, not a draw, not a victory. The revised wording opens the door to creationism in the classroom and in the textbooks. The decisions will not only affect Texas students for the next ten years, but could result in watered-down science textbooks across the U.S. There's a reason creationists are claiming victory."

Can't wait until all of our schools are as good as Texas' schools.

Source: http://ncse.com/news/2009/03/science-setback-texas-schools-0...

Edit: Further clarification of the Texas textbook issues for all states: Battles over textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas, where bitter skirmishes regularly erupt over everything from sex education to phonics and new math. But never before has the board’s right wing wielded so much power over the writing of the state’s standards. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what booksschools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, "Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.ht...

jbooth2• 17 years ago

Yeah, there was a quote recently from the Texas BoE chair, I'm too lazy to look it up but it was basically:

"When evaluating textbooks, I consider 1) Are they skeptical enough about evolution, 2) Do they give enough favorable page space to Ronald Reagan"

Gimme a break. California may have made it's own bed but this kind of anti-science is the reason why we're going to continue to decline as a nation.

scotch_drinker• 17 years ago

Holding up the teaching of evolution as the example of Texas education is disingenuous at best. Yes, Texas has a history of doing very odd things as it relates to topics like sex education and evolution but these things are so tiny in the broad context of a K-12 level education that they are effectively meaningless.

When it comes down to it, whether a kid is taught evolution or some far-fetched creationist theory about the creation of the world matters little in the quality of their education as it relates to their success on leaving high school. That's what kids should be compared on and if I were guessing, I'd guess that's the standard here.

It's fun to take easy potshots at Texas based on backwards beliefs in the origin of the species but in the end, kids ability to read, write and do math are far more imporant.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

I'm just replying to draw attention to your very important point. There is content and there is methodology. Texas might be teaching backwards content but the question this series of articles has been raising is whether the methodology used in their schools is more effective. So unless the content is so backwards as to be more simplistic (say if they were leaving evolution out completely) I don't see how their backwards beliefs are relevant.

jbooth2• 17 years ago

It's not disingenuous, it goes to the core of what people believe education should be.

Most of us believe education should be about imparting knowledge as well as "how to think".

It should not be about ideological indoctrination. We're not communists. EDIT: heck, the soviets even did a better job than us of teaching math

adzp2• 17 years ago

Having gone through most of my K-12 schooling in SF Bay Area, I can't say I'm surprised by this decision. Being an advanced student was not encouraged by the school district, nor the schools that I attended. Accelerated programs were canceled right and left to make everything "more fair". Scheduling was always a nightmare. Talking to my husband who went through his K-12 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was very eye-opening as it seems his district made every effort to push the advanced students forward that much more. At this point I don't consider myself disadvantaged; I was lucky enough to have parents who pushed me to excel in spite of a system that holds people back, but not all are that fortunate.

America as Texas vs. California, Part III

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