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A year-long study by the Long Island Index has found that the region's educational structure, characterized by a large number of small districts, suffers from inefficiency and inflexibility, and a mismatch between school resources and student needs.
Among the anomalies the Index reports, in districts where student needs are greatest, per-pupil spending is the least. By contrast, in districts where large sums are spent, academic achievement is no higher than in mid-range schools.
The current structure also limits the region's flexibility in terms of improving racial and ethnic diversity, providing programs for the gifted and talented, and addressing the needs of children with limited English, the Index found.
Although Long Island has a long history of rejecting proposals for change, the Long Island Index survey found substantial support for many new options that would address the key issues facing Long Islanders. For example:
* 73% of Long Islanders favor pooling commercial property taxes and distributing them equally across the school districts.
* 66% of Long Islanders support a magnet school to provide in-depth instruction in science, mathematics or the arts and 63% favor locating the school in their own district.
* 67% of Long Islanders favor offering a limited number of children in failing school districts the chance to attend better schools in nearby districts where space is available. 64% said they would support this program for their own school district.
* 61% of Long Islanders support creating housing for lower-income families in middle class and wealthier neighborhoods.
Here are two stories LIers like magnet schools, property tax plans (http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/friday/longisland/ny-liskul306016761jan30,0,4810267.story - broken link) and Syosset arts school LI's only magnet-type academy (http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/friday/longisland/ny-liarts306016764jan30,0,6387730.story - broken link) from today's (Friday. January 30) NEWSDAY concerning the Long Island Index report.
Study calls for consolidation of LI school districts (http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/saturday/longisland/ny-liinde316018491jan31,0,589359.story - broken link) is another NEWSDAY article on the same Long Island Index report.
As for the report on Page 3, Introduction:
"This survey was conducted by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research during the Fall of 2008. Telephone interviews were conducted with a random selected sample of 813 Long Island Residents, with an additional randomly selected oversample of 202 Black and 200 Latino Residents."
I'm not a statistician, so I wonder: How can 813 racially random people, and 402 race specific random people be a representative sample of the population of LI? The initial 813 includes everyone, adding the race specific oversample makes the survey population a less accurate reflection of LI's diverse population.
If SUNY's survey department drew 1,215 racially random people as opposed to adding a racial oversample, would the results have significantly changed?
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61% of Long Islanders support creating housing for lower-income families in middle class and wealthier neighborhoods
Racially broken down in the appendix, Question 26 (Partial results above) had 29% overall strongly favoring, and of those: 22% were white, 61% were black, 43% were Latino. The other 32% "somewhat support" (29% + 32% = 61%) of those: 35% were white, 23% black and 27% Latino.
If there hadn't been a race specific oversample, and instead the survey participant pool were larger and more reflective of the racial, ethnic and economic breakdown of Nassau & Suffolk residents, what would those figures really have been?
ALL statistics, "LIE"...it depends on what you want to prove, and "who" is doing the proving.
Since "we" are usually assaulted with LOTS of "numbers", it all becomes ONE BIG DRONE, to the Brain.
This isn't "lying", but it is using selective evidence to establish a conclusion that is misleading. All of the facts needed to determine just how bogus the outcome is are right there in the article, as OhBeeHave pointed out. Maybe you would understand them better if they used 95% more unnecessary punctuation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OhBeeHave
As for the report on Page 3, Introduction:
"This survey was conducted by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research during the Fall of 2008. Telephone interviews were conducted with a random selected sample of 813 Long Island Residents, with an additional randomly selected oversample of 202 Black and 200 Latino Residents."
I'm not a statistician, so I wonder: How can 813 racially random people, and 402 race specific random people be a representative sample of the population of LI? The initial 813 includes everyone, adding the race specific oversample makes the survey population a less accurate reflection of LI's diverse population.
If SUNY's survey department drew 1,215 racially random people as opposed to adding a racial oversample, would the results have significantly changed?
Racially broken down in the appendix, Question 26 (Partial results above) had 29% overall strongly favoring, and of those: 22% were white, 61% were black, 43% were Latino. The other 32% "somewhat support" (29% + 32% = 61%) of those: 35% were white, 23% black and 27% Latino.
If there hadn't been a race specific oversample, and instead the survey participant pool were larger and more reflective of the racial, ethnic and economic breakdown of Nassau & Suffolk residents, what would those figures really have been?
Wow good call. I agree completely, I think if this was a more accurate cross section of Long Islanders the results would be radically different. Just taking Nassau into account, 2007 (most recent) estimates put it at ~12% Latino and ~11% black. If the first group of 813 was truly mixed (ie: not entirely white), and we know that overall, at the very least, it consisted of 34% black and Latino residents from the two other groups, that means that roughly 48% of the total residents surveyed would be black or Latino. Maybe they were trying to adjust for what they predict to be shifting demographics, but that's what I would call massive over-compensation. Totally not reflective of reality on Long Island, and the other figures you posted support that as well.
That said, I do think this organization does incredible work and I respect their efforts very much. They've really done a lot more usable planning work than our local governments (the people who should be showing us this type of data) have in the last decade, we're fortunate to have them. This is just an anomoly, even the Newsday article alluded to this.
My personal opinion on what the results would appear to suggest (I'll try to keep it brief):
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* 73% of Long Islanders favor pooling commercial property taxes and distributing them equally across the school districts.
I agree with this one. Districts on Long Island are so small that there are hundreds of instances where their service area just does not have the infrastrcture capacity to ever develop a commercial tax base. Lets say you live right on the border of another school district, which also happens to be right around the block from a heavily commercial strip. You go food shopping there every week, you take your kids to karate lessons, you put gas in your car, you go out to the bar. You are spending hard earned money in your neighborhood that gets spent on keeping businesses running that aren't contributing one cent to defer your school taxes. Suburban sprawl and the invention of shopping malls and box stores has made this situation significantly worse as well. All of that tax revenue that was formerly spread all over the island has become centralized into a few tiny areas. "Mom and Pop" are dead, remember that you're funding the Uniondale SD next time you purchase something useless at Roosevelt Field Mall.
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* 66% of Long Islanders support a magnet school to provide in-depth instruction in science, mathematics or the arts and 63% favor locating the school in their own district.
I think this has it's good and bad points. They aren't magnet schools, but I do know a lot of people who went through the various BOCES vocational programs in high school and in most cases it was a real benefit. New York City Schools also have true magnet schools and most are highly regarded.... however in NYC, it seems like these schools are the one saving grace in a long suffering district. I'm not saying it would happen here, but I'd hate to have your kid's one chance at a decent education being escaping the local high school and trying to get into some program he or she may not even be that interested in. It kind of scares me that magnet schools are even included in this discussion. It's a fine idea but not something that should be considered a ladder out of a failing district. Let's build a little more parity into our districts, trim a lot of fat and lower taxes substantially first, then we can talk magnet schools.
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* 67% of Long Islanders favor offering a limited number of children in failing school districts the chance to attend better schools in nearby districts where space is available. 64% said they would support this program for their own school district.
Don't like it at all. Let's not accept having failing school districts whatsoever. Most schools on Long Island are already phenomenal, academically. As far as I'm concerned, this does nothing but segregate good and bad districts even further than they have been already. Going back to the first point, all schools should have somewhat similar resources available to them. If they have the money and are still failing then people need to get fired and curriculum needs to be revised. Options for schools in poorer areas should never include cherry picking all the talent out while those left behind rot.
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* 61% of Long Islanders support creating housing for lower-income families in middle class and wealthier neighborhoods.
Again, this just seems like a cheap and easy way out of the hood.....and not really anything that pertains to schools. No, I don't think this should ever be forced to happen. There are many areas where people of mixed socioeconomic backgrounds live together (and in diverse living accommodations), but FORCING this situation to occur - as far as I'm concerned - is just creating a microcosm of the disparity we already have on LI. If I know Long Islanders as well as I think I do, this is just going to create bubbles of poverty all over the map where attitudes inside and out of it haven't changed or more likely have become amplified towards those on the other side. This isn't fair to anyone, let this situation occur naturally....improve those terrible districts and it will.
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