Those five states are among the poorest in the nation.
Those five states have some of the highest black and hispanic populations in the nation.
Those five states are somewhat more rural than the national average.
All three are also correlated to low test scores.
If want to argue that test scores are tied to collective bargaining, you could see how scores changed within the same states. Nationally, collective bargaining for teachers began in the 60s, and was about where it is now by 1980. Wanna guess which direction SAT scores went in that period?
No. I tend to suspect that union status correlates very loosely with academic success. I do tend to suspect it correlates strongly with spending.
Meaning: even without collective bargaining, teachers here make decent salaries and benefits. They are not oppressed serfs laboring on wal-mart wages.
Indeed. States with lots of poor, rural minorities do badly on the SAT.
I’m sorry – independent of any issues about Walker or Wisconsin, you’ve got an error here about median. The median value has nothing to do with the extremes – it’s the value that has as many entries above it as below it. So in your first example the median is, indeed, 30K. But in the second it’s 10K. Contrary to what some people have said in this thread, all things being equal, the median is usually gives you a better picture of prevailing conditions than the mean – as in this case.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled arguments.
I know it’s the pit, so calling “cite!” doesn’t have the same inevitability. But you offer nothing beyond your word for your assertions, including the relative salaries of school teachers in your state or their level of oppression. We’ll leave that an open question. Same for the role that collective bargaining had or did not have with respect to that level of compensation.
As for the larger argument, that lack of collective bargaining correlates strongly with poor standardized measures of student success, you have not defeated it at all. You have though suggested what most any person would readily acknowledge, that the reasons for a state’s national ranking in measurements of this kind is complex and a result of many factors. But you have done nothing to prove that lack of collective bargaining is not one of those factors.
According to this Virginia is the 6th wealthiest state overall in the United States.
From the same list just linked only North and South Carolina fall on the bottom ten. So Virginia, Georgia and Texas are not among the “poorest”.
Texas, Georgia and North Carolina are in the top ten with the largest black populations. Virginia is #11, South Carolina #13.
For hispanic populations Texas is way up there. North Carolina and Georgia are a distant #10 & 11. Virginia is back at #16 and South Carolina way back at #35.
Is there a reason rural kids do worse than, say, inner city kids in school? Cite?
Sorry, not seeing your numbers in any way showing a trend here as causes for poor performance by the students in your state.
Well, comparing median public school teacher salaries in Wisconsin against median private school teacher salaries in Wisconsin doesn’t seem deceptive on its face. If you want to explain the disparity by telling me why I am comparing apppels and oranges (because private school teachers are less qualified or most of the private schools are in really low cost of living locations) then fine but on its face it sounds like public school teachers make more than private school teachers in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has one of the top ten public school systems in the country. If you really believe in merit pay, wouldn’t you say that they shold receive a top ten salary (adjusted for Cost of Living) or does merit pay only work to cut pay and fire people?
Yeah if you have a data set of 10 or 20, then sure. When you have a data set of thousands its not useless. Its enough to get your started. It tells you what the guy at the 50th percentile makes. If you want to argue that this hides the fact that the bottom 49% makes 10K/year while the top 51% makes 58K/year then fine but absent some evidence of this sort of skew, I think we can compare the medians and come to some tentative positions.
To be fair he is just talking about correlation, not causation. Lower test scores may be correlated with large black and/or hispannic populations, but it doesn’t imply it is caused by some innate characteristic of being black or hispanic.
Wisconsin is second on this list as well but it notes that most wisconsin students take the ACT (only 5% opt to take the SAT and i suspect thre might be some self selection there).
No he isn’t, he specifcally says they are correlated. He is in fact trying to point out the logical fallacy of saying correlation is equal to causation, which the earlier poster did with the SAT scores and collective bargaining. You can argue correlation, but you need more than just side by side number comparisons.
Oh, I wasn’t making the comparison so i wouldn’t have taken offense if you had in fact called it deceptive, I was just pointing out that comparing medians is not meaningless like one of the posters mentioned.
The acute disparity in particiaption rates make it suspect for being able to say anyything. My guess is that many states do not require the SAT (for example to get into University of Wisconsin schools you need just take the ACT), in those states the kids who take the SAT would more likely be the smarter students who have the possibility of a wider range of schools.
