quote:
46. California
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Hey, choad! :P
That's also about where we rank in per-student spending. The interesting thing is California ranks third in teacher salaries but we're near the bottom on overall spending. This means we have fewer teachers per student and less money for books, supplies, custodians, maintenance, etc. than all those states that rank above us in performance.
The other thing you have to keep in mind when you see abysmal rankings like that is the raw material California has to take in and educate. I doubt Vermont has the percentage of English learners that we do, and they certainly don't have the number of low socio-economic families California does. In fact, L.A. Unified has more students than the entire state population of Vermont. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
The school district I work for has 3 of the top high schools in the country. One has 98% of students going on to 4-year college--many of them Ivy League and other top universities. Yet, the statistics of my high-performing district are aggregated with the large, urban districts with all of the social factors that are barriers to learning.
Another great thing that will start next year is when we have to start lumping in graduation and testing data of special education kids who will never, ever, ever be able to pass the high school exit exam with general education kids.
Hopefully, Prop 76 will fail on Tuesday, or we can expect another $4 billion in cuts to state education funding in this state (which would mean about $4 million to my district's $86 million budget). Oh, but we have insanely low property taxes on our incredibly high priced real estate! I think our priorities are a bit fucked up.
