Is Texas REALLY that bad at educating its kids?

[Dr. Jake Oil]

Keep in mind there are a lot of people in Texas who live way out in the sticks, if you are in/around Dallas and Houston, you're not seeing those people.

[mcmom10]

Not to generalize, but I did know a family who moved from New York to Dallas and put their first grader in a Dallas charter school (exemplary, well regarded) in the middle of the school year. The child moved right at the top of the class, she was revisiting in the Spring semester what New York had covered in the fall, her New York homework had been more challenging etc. The Dallas kids did catch up with her eventually, she wasn't a particularly smart child, just had a head start in NY. This was at the elementary level, and I'm not sure how the picture would have looked at the upper levels.

[Willsson]

Is Texas REALLY that bad at educating its kids?

There was a post in the forum with links to the NAEC that showed performance of Texas students trended somewhat better than the national averages based on race comparisons. The use of race comparisons was included as whites in Texas performed better than whites nationally on average, hispanics to hispanics and blacks to blacks. There being much larger racial differences in Texas than in many other states.

The post has been removed but if you do some research you might be able to find like results. But you have to really want to do the research yourself.

[TXRunner]

It's really hard to compare data from one state to another because of the differences in population and immigration. You can't really compare Texas to Vermont. It has to be similar size and population. The only states that I can think of that might be similar are California, Florida and New York. But even then Florida and New York have a higher percentage of parents who are fluent in English.

California has the lowest scores for proficiency on the 8th grade NAEP exam, yet has the highest rate of graduation. Texas has the highest score for proficiency on the 8th grade exam and is virtually tied with New York and Florida on the 4th grade test, California being behind the other three. California scored lower on both tests than Texas, but is rated higher overall by the NAEP. We have the highest percentage of students scoring advanced on the 8th grade test, but the lowest percentage scoring a 3 or above on an AP exam.

Personally I believe there are so many factors involved that you really can't compare one state to another. Many of the numbers are so similar between the states or one state is up in one thing and down in another. I definitely think we are competitive with other states, but who knows who is doing a better job with the populations they have.

I have to smirk inside when, at faculty meetings, they(our admin) flash our statistics on the projector and attempt to analyze our data. There are so many variables that they don't take into account making their analysis completely worthless. For example from year to another our hispanic passing percentage might jump and they say good job working with out hispanic population, let's keep that number up there. Nevermind that the first year we might have had 8 hispanic students and 6 were ESL and previous TAKS failures. The next year we may have had 3 hispanic students and they were all enrolled in Pre-AP courses. It had nothing to do with us as teachers.

When I sit through these analysis meetings it reminds me of when we did physics problems in school and totally ignored wind resistance or any other kind of friction.

[Willsson]

Originally Posted by TXRunner

It's really hard to compare data from one state to another because of the differences in population and immigration. You can't really compare Texas to Vermont. It has to be similar size and population. The only states that I can think of that might be similar are California, Florida and New York. But even then Florida and New York have a higher percentage of parents who are fluent in English.

Spoiler

California has the lowest scores for proficiency on the 8th grade NAEP exam, yet has the highest rate of graduation. Texas has the highest score for proficiency on the 8th grade exam and is virtually tied with New York and Florida on the 4th grade test, California being behind the other three. California scored lower on both tests than Texas, but is rated higher overall by the NAEP. We have the highest percentage of students scoring advanced on the 8th grade test, but the lowest percentage scoring a 3 or above on an AP exam.

Personally I believe there are so many factors involved that you really can't compare one state to another. Many of the numbers are so similar between the states or one state is up in one thing and down in another. I definitely think we are competitive with other states, but who knows who is doing a better job with the populations they have.

I have to smirk inside when, at faculty meetings, they(our admin) flash our statistics on the projector and attempt to analyze our data. There are so many variables that they don't take into account making their analysis completely worthless. For example from year to another our hispanic passing percentage might jump and they say good job working with out hispanic population, let's keep that number up there. Nevermind that the first year we might have had 8 hispanic students and 6 were ESL and previous TAKS failures. The next year we may have had 3 hispanic students and they were all enrolled in Pre-AP courses. It had nothing to do with us as teachers.

When I sit through these analysis meetings it reminds me of when we did physics problems in school and totally ignored wind resistance or any other kind of friction

.

iowahawk: Longhorns 17, Badgers 1

[TXRunner]

Originally Posted by tofurkey

iowahawk: Longhorns 17, Badgers 1

Wow, nice article. I don't know that we could take all factors into account in reality and, if we could, it would take a team of comprehensive qualified personnel to do it. We would also need a barrage of different types of tests over a specific time period.

[DoubleFly]

GreatSchools.org is probably the most well-known school comparison web site, but it only does ratings IN-STATE. So a "10" in Georgia isn't the same as a "10" in California. But I found another web site called NeighborhoodScout.com that attempts to calibrate each state's individual requirements and test scores so that you can compare schools across the nation. I don't think the Dallas suburbs fare that poorly. Sure, they may not be as good as the public school systems in the northeastern or western suburbs. But I see no evidence to think that they fare "poorly." In fact, i would say they were "above average."

Also, Texas has a disproportionately large number of immigrants, many of whom don't speak the language. You really can't expect overall test scores to capture this detail (unless you break down by race) as one poster commented. So if anything, a lot of the "stats" are probably not going to be able to capture that.

I work from home, and when we had the chance to move, we decided to move to Texas, based mostly on two criteria: quality of schools and affordability. I think we're getting great educational value for our dollar in many of the Dallas suburbs - probably the best in the southern half of the country (we were looking to get away from the cold).

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by mcmom10

Not to generalize, but I did know a family who moved from New York to Dallas and put their first grader in a Dallas charter school (exemplary, well regarded) in the middle of the school year. The child moved right at the top of the class, she was revisiting in the Spring semester what New York had covered in the fall, her New York homework had been more challenging etc. The Dallas kids did catch up with her eventually, she wasn't a particularly smart child, just had a head start in NY. This was at the elementary level, and I'm not sure how the picture would have looked at the upper levels.

Frankly, I would give that single example almost no weight. Texas and New York have almost identical SAT scores for one broader data point.

[Brookside]

Originally Posted by TXRunner

California has the lowest scores for proficiency on the 8th grade NAEP exam, yet has the highest rate of graduation.

TXRunner - I have a friend who is a middle school curriculum director and this correlates with her experience. She says kids from CA are consistently behind Texas in almost every category -- regardless of race.

Also the reason CA has such a high graduation rate is that "kids" are allowed to stay in high school until the age of 22!! They are called "super seniors" -- apparently they can't graduate until they pass the state exit exam -- and they are allowed to remain in school and take the test multiple times until they pass it.