Keep in mind that MA has an extremely robust lottery system. It tops the list of states for lotterty spending per capita at an astounding $951.92 per year. That matters to this discussion because the state shares lottery profits with municipalities, and some of that funding likely goes into the school systems there.
My state is number 2. But within the state there are urban priority districts, rural, suburban, small and large districts, and a large magnet school system. Really, casting a broad net that all schools within the state are tippy top just isn’t true.
But I will say…I have long said that it shouldn’t be an accident if geography that your schools are good.
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Certain states will be disadvantaged because of geography.
For example, Texas has a lot of undocumented immigrants. Those kids historically will score lower on many standardized tests because English may be a second language.
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On the flip side, how do you explain the disproportionate % of Asians at elite universities?
That’s what CA said when we voted to pass for the lottery years ago. It’s always a shame here.
CA ranks 40, which is not terribly surprising given the enormous population and Prop 13’s effect on property taxes. Most parents with means buy a house in the best school district they can afford and then underwrite the public school district with fundraising and a nonprofit foundation.
My kids went to a K-8 public school district where the foundation raises $2 million EACH YEAR to fund the salaries of music, art, Spanish teachers as well as school psychologists and librarians. The foundation runs a school iPad program and funds various other programs. The fundraising efforts are kind but aggressive. Of course you didn’t have to give. But they were quite clear that it took about $1600 per kid to “close the budget gap.” Many people give more, and use employer match programs to increase their contributions. We called it the public-private school.
This situation was shocking to me when we first moved to CA from NYC. My daughter was in public school in Brooklyn, where she had music, art, two teachers in a small class of 20 students… with minimal fundraising by the PTA and no foundation.
The inequity in CA schools is a disgrace.
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It is easy to explain if you look at parent educational attainment, which is likely the strongest factor in a kid’s educational achievement and attainment. The Asian American population has a large number of immigrants who came on graduate student and skilled (highly educated) worker visas initially, and the descendants of such immigrants. It should not be a surprise that a population heavily loaded with people with advanced degrees produces educationally high achieving kids, whether you think it is nature, nurture, or both.
Note that this effect occurs with other racial or ethnic groups, but is much less noticed because the number of immigrants is small compared to the total population in the US. For example, it is only occasionally noticed that Nigerian American kids of recent (in generational terms) immigrant heritage are greatly overrepresented in colleges and elite colleges compared to overall African American or (all race / ethnicity) American kids. The effect is even less noticed among recent (in generational terms) immigrants from Europe and their kids.
On the other hand, Hispanic and Latino immigration is mostly from Mexico, and most immigrants are those with lower educational attainment. Most of the African American population is descended from those who were educationally suppressed for generations (and perhaps still ongoing).
Regarding Hawaii, most of the Asian American population is descended from farm laborers, rather than the graduate students and skilled workers more common in post-1965 immigration from Asia.
In other words, the answers are easy to find if you look beyond the superficial racial / ethnic appearances. But most do not.
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Not in my hood. You can live in apartment and still go to the best schools here, the same as the kids who live in more expensive neighborhood, i.e, $25 million dollar home. I don’t recall any fundraising either. But we have to pay Mello Roos every year though. People live in apartment units don’t.
I grew up in rural Illinois, spent most of my adult life in suburban Northern Virginia and now live in Minneapolis. There is inequality in all three of these states. Unfortunately with school funding being largely based on property taxes, the wealthier areas have much more money. It’s sometimes possible to live in a cheaper housing situation in certain top school districts, but in general the wealthier the residents overall, the better the schools.
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That may be true in many states, but it is not true in California, which funds K12 primarily thru the State budget. In fact, half the state budget is required to be spent on local education.
California is 9th in total taxation so there is plenty of money.
“CA ranks 40, which is not terribly surprising given the enormous population and Prop 13’s effect on property taxes.”
Prop 13 is a common boogieman, as the State legislature could fund local education more, but they choose not to.
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Thanks for the information. I wasn’t aware of that. But the parents being able to privately fund stuff is another issue. Not sure what can be done about that, but it is a disgrace.
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While I agree that parental educational attainment is the biggest factor, it doesn’t quite explain why some Asian American students from less educated families also significantly outperform students of some other ethnicities from similar family backgrounds. There appears to be a cultural factor, which explains not only the variations between these Asian American students and others from similar family educational backgrounds, but also the variations among different ethnicities within the broad Asian American group. These families appear to be more willing to allocate greater portion of their resources (both time and money) to their kids’ education.
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There are ways to live somewhat more cheaply in our school district, and no one is forced to donate
to the foundation. But plenty of people do—enough to raise $2m a year. There are no Mello Roos taxes here (I’m not sure what that is?)
I’m sure that is helpful. But MA, in general is split by income. Towns with high incomes often have houses with average costs in the low seven figures. People will pay 18-50K in property taxes in these areas. They move to these towns with young kids and they move out after their kids finish school. Due to zoning, many of these towns have also kept out apartment housing and any dense zoning. They spend a lot per pupil and teacher salaries are very high. I think that helps the students in terms of measurements, but it also pushes moderate and low income families into far worse levels of education. If a home in a moderate town in Eastern MA is $500-700K, that’s a huge burden on families. And of course, those who can’t buy a home often find themselves stuck in urban areas (more dense and over crowded schools).
So yes, lottery $ probably helps ( esp. in the more urban areas) but it’s much less than you might think. The spending per student is really high compared to other states. And that does apply to all areas and income levels across the states, though the really costly towns spend a small fortune; The others just spend a fortune.
Upthread, someone mentions apartment dwellers attending the same schools as people who have a 25M home. I don’t know of any/many MA towns like that (maybe a handful on the Cape?). Again, due to zoning.
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They are parcel tax, some can be as long as 60 years.
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However, the state of Hawaii schools argues against that being an inherent cultural factor.
The possible explanation is that if other members of your ethnicity whom you have frequent social contact with are mostly high educational achievers, that may influence you to strive for that (like a lesser version of the influence of parents’ high educational attainment). That would suggest that such an effect would be stronger among those groups with higher percentages of graduate student and skilled worker immigrants than other groups, rather than any inherent cultural factor.
Note that for some of the Asian American ethnic groups with high educational attainment, the educational attainments in their countries of ancestral origin is significantly lower (and may be lower than the overall population in the US). So this educational attainment observation is more of an artifact of immigration selection (for the highly educated) than it is of the ethnic cultures.
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Yes, for example, the are plenty of exam/cram schools in NYC which target mainly Asian families with very limited resources (waiters, dishwashers, deliverers) to sell them a dream/fantasy that once you kids are in Stuyvesant or Bronx Science, then they’d have it made. Regardless how the students get into the “better” schools, I applaud their tenacity and perseverance.
Culture is local and, by definition, influenced by the local population one socially interact. Hawaiians of Asian decent have been through many generations of assimilation with not only the dominant American culture but also those of other Pacific islands.
The fact that their kids have climbed the educational ladder shows precisely the cultural influence.
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It is the cultural influence of parent educational attainment rather than ethnicity.
IIT graduates studying for PhDs in the US are not representative of the population in India with respect to cultural influence for education, for example.
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Mostly yes, but it has also been my observation from my multiple interactions with and work related travel to China, Singapore and India that people there do seem to place a very high value on academic achievement. So I would say - yes, there is some cultural aspect but the immigration selection of the highly educated and highly accomplished in America is a much larger factor.
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