Educational Success: It all depends on where you live

Parent Cafe
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<p>A new study attempts to rank the cumulative effects of education experience from birth through adulthood and pinpoint the chance for success at each stage and for each state concludes that a child's chances for success in life in America depends most on where they live.</p>

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Taken together, the following indicators and benchmarks - family income, parent education, parental employment, parental fluency in English, kindergarten enrollment, elementary reading, middle school mathematics, high school graduation, college enrollment and degree status, annual income and steady employment - determine a chance for success index...</p>

<p>According to the report, the states where students have the lowest chances for success and will face an accumulating series of hurdles both educationally and economically are Nevada, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.</p>

<p>New York state is above the national average in most categories, but is tied at 18th overall with Delaware, and is behind Virginia, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Vermont, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Dakota, respectively.</p>

<p>Stan Mathews, chairman of the Urban Studies program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, said he is not surprised that study results found that where a student lives is a key success factor.</p>

<p>"It sounds perfectly logical, and I agree that where a child lives makes all the difference," Mathews wrote in an e-mail from London, where he is on a year's sabbatical. "Our immediate environment plays a very active role in shaping how we perceive ourselves, our place in the world and who we become." </p>

<p>The New York state Education Department questions the chance for success index, because half of the indicators relate to parents' educational and socioeconomic status (things such as family income, parent education, parental employment, annual income and steady employment).</p>

<p>"Six or seven of them (indicators) have to do with the parents. We're being called to task for the conditions that children bring to schools," said state Education Department spokesman Tom Dunn...</p>

<p>In general, the index shows that individuals born in the South and the Southwest are less likely to experience success, while those living in the Northeast and the North Central states are more likely to do so.</p>

<p>"Smart states," said Virginia B. Edwards, the editor and publisher of Education Week, "like smart companies, try to make the most of their investments by ensuring that young people's education is connected from one stage to the next ? reducing the chances that students will be lost along the way or require costly remedial programs to acquire skills or knowledge they could have learned right from the start."</p>

<p>The 2007 report tracks academic achievement - or the lack thereof - at an early age through college, because early academic achievement and failure is often amplified from elementary through post secondary years.

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<p><a href="http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070305/NEWS01/703050315/1002/NEWS%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070305/NEWS01/703050315/1002/NEWS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>While the general conclusions may be valid, I am certain the Mr Matthews would agree that there are lots of outlier data points in the souther states mentioned in the article.</p>

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<p>This is stupid, if you live in a rich, highly educated, racially homogenous area of any of the listed "bad" states, you'll experience the same "success" as those in the "good" states. All of the listed states suffer considerably from variables that tend to affect certain groups.</p>

<p>Let us make some generalizations regarding the "bad" states:</p>

<p>The Hispanic population in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas is on the whole poorly educated, not very fluent in english, not very "well off", and not graduating high school.</p>

<p>The same can be said for the "rural" students of the South.</p>

<p>Their conclusion doesn't prove anything - it just shows that living in a state with Mexicans or Rednecks means that your state will be rated lower than others. Chance of success? If you have the right background, it doesn't matter if you live in Virginia or Alabama, one's neighborhood or town maybe, but a state is an over-generalization.</p>

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<p>I think it makes sense, as a general statement. Just based on reading this site I've pretty much come to the conclusion that what your parents are like is the biggest factor in where most students go to college. </p>

<p>But I also agree that breaking it up into entire states can be misleading. I grew up in one of the "good" states, but my town was absolutely nothing like what people think of as the typical NJ town...we get lots of out-of-town wisecrackers asking if they got lost on their way to Iowa because they surely cannot be in NJ - there are just too many cows! I'm sure there are hundreds of "better" affluent suburbs in the south where people get the added benefit of being seen as exceptional, because it is less expected.</p>

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<p>And if the kids are imbued with the right attitude, the kids can learn anywhere, as the education truly is there if you want it. Parents wanted to send me to private HS but I wanted to go to public inner city one with my firends. I won. My education was terrific! I told them that I would learn no matter where I went, and that they should set a side the money for college, and they did. In fact, a lot of my freshman year in college was review! I took advantage of everything my teachers and the school offered and was actually better prepared than many of the kids in my college. The teachers were thrilled to have a student who cared and wanted to learn and bent over backwards for me. BTW, we were apartment dwellers, parents immigrants, and didn't buy a house until I was a jr. in HS, so the affluence of my parents didn't play into it at all, other than their pushing me to do well in school to do better than they did. And BTW, there are districts in the south that have placed tons of kids into the ivies and elites, because they have as good a rep as the northern and northeastern schools. As an aside, I have been in a district where schools (both HS and jr. H have won Blue Ribbon ratings.) We privately state that it is the deathknell for the school. A lot of people move in once they find the winning school, into apartments, and the schools' test scores, etc., go down, and discipline problems go up. A couple years later, when the new designations come out, they move again. Obviously, these people think that the schools will take care of it all. They need to realize that it is the attitude at home that reflects how their children will succeed moreso than the school. This study confirms that.</p>

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<p>What happened to California? Isn't it a very strong state in education?</p>

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<p>This is a link to a map that illustrates some of the various factors.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2007/17csi.h26.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2007/17csi.h26.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>jovenes, my innocent thing. Little do you know how unintentionally rhetorical, and ironic, your question is. The State that was once Number One in the nation, for many, many years. Once the envy of other states, with its (prior!) educational priorities, philosophy, resources. Once a virtual paradise for teachers and students, and their wildly happy parents. A rational proportion (small) of administrators to classroom teachers.</p>

<p>Here's "what happened" to California:</p>

<p>(1) Growth in school-age population outpacing even the national rate. Growth caused by 3 things: interstate migration and international immigration + the usual echo boomers which affect all states.<br>
(a) extremes in degree of school readiness widening: on the one hand, newcomers from East Asia and South Asia and Iran, many of whose parents are working in Silicon Valley; on the other, massive Third World numbers of students not literate, very un-ready. Creates bifurcated school system. Who is served by the publics? The majority groups, the extremes on both ends. However, the low end is not really "served," because the education will fail when fluency is rejected & perceived as nonessential by those populating public school classrooms. Low expectations are the governing principle in those classrooms. (Low expectations about mastering the language & integrating those skills into school work.)</p>

<pre><code>(b) Population overload in a decentralized school system was a nightmare waiting to happen, and happen it did. Doesn't mean that the occasional insulated public did not thrive & excel. But those with extreme needs were extremely underserved, with Too Many Cooks Spoiling the Broth, bureaucracy tripping all over itself to prescribe & treat. (Sorry for mixing the metaphors.)
</code></pre>

<p>(2) Massive influx of such a large Third World segment, combined with political priorities dictating State budgets going to economic needs often, even as educational needs remain high on the budget, but that budget is without exaggeration 50% administration, 50% classroom. That's because the 'administrative' part overlaps with the State's social priorities, which have been demonstrated to be more important in the average classroom than academics.</p>

<p>(3) Professional teacher associations shamefully in bed with politicians, selling out the teaching profession too often to agendas having little to do with direct education, but much to do with "other" agendas. Rudderless leadership willing to go along impulsively with the latest educational fad instead of a well -thought out intellectual approach which is nevertheless flexible.</p>

<p>(4) A migrant population -- and I don't mean necessarily farmworkers. I mean a mobile school population, caused by profound dissatisfaction with the system & an exit from it, or from the State, from those not of majority segments -- neither quite wealthy & educated, nor illiterate. This destabilizes attendance, and since the formula for funding schools & keeping them in existence is attendance, unpredictability is the name of the game. CA is nearing the 50% level for numbers of charter schools vs. non-charters. These are not as stable: charter often only 2,3 yrs in life. Often not renewed because State's demand for performance is unrealistic & not comparable to the lack of performance permitted in non-charter school.</p>

<p>Any other questions?</p>

<p>Indeed, What Happened to California? Good title for a magazine article.</p>

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<p>Other factors would be Proposition 13, which lowered property taxes state-wide (Schools took a huge & sudden hit), and some would say Teacher Unions which publicly stress protection over professionalism. However, Unions are hardly unique to CA. Prop 13 had a long-range budgetary impact on CA, but the budgetary impact of Third World immigration has been far greater. If there were no unions, the policies of the State Dept. of Education would be sufficient to create & sustain their own damage. </p>

<p>In my earlier post I meant centralization, not decentralization. (A model which is not terribly efficient or effective; great potential for waste; nonresponsive to local needs.)</p>

<p>Perhaps a more important factor than the above 2 addenda is the very economy of CA itself: richly diverse, with many opportunities leading unsatisfied, underpaid teachers away from their first profession of choice to tempting alternates: the computer industry, bio-technology, large University systems, entertainment, the wine industry, the culinary industry. There are so many alternatives that have much more satisfying working conditions, & often better pay.</p>

<p>(And I'm a teacher. I get to criticize.)</p>

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<p>epip, that is one magazine article I would love to read. Great analysis and criticisms. I certainly agree with you and the study that "education does not exist in a vacuum" in a society undergoing rapid demographic change, uneven health care, areas "of concentrated poverty, and an economy increasingly stratified by wealth..." These trends are all the more disturbing when taken in the context of an educational system that, according to the study, perpetuates rather than reduces class differences - from cradle to college and beyond.

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That?s in part because children from low- income families generally attend schools that by any measure?school resources, student achievement, qualified teachers?lag behind those of their more affluent peers.

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<p><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/01/04/17wellbeing.h26.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/01/04/17wellbeing.h26.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The Detailed State Data Comparison page allows you to look up data from several states at once to compare and contrast, or just pull up data for individual states.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.edweek.org/apps/qc2007/state_compare.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.edweek.org/apps/qc2007/state_compare.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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the historical splits between different levels of education in the United States have made coordination difficult, with early-childhood education, elementary and secondary schooling, and postsecondary and training institutions often operating in separate silos, with different rules, different financial structures, different accountability systems, and different expectations for success...</p>

<p>The new Chance-for-Success Index, developed for the report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, provides a state-focused perspective on the importance of education throughout a person?s lifetime. The index is based on 13 indicators that highlight whether young children get off to a good start, succeed in elementary and secondary school, and hit crucial educational and economic benchmarks as adults.</p>

<p>This year?s report is very much a transitional document as we move from an exclusive focus on K-12 education to a broader perspective on the connections between K-12 education and other systems with which it intersects.

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<p><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/01/04/17shr.h26.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/01/04/17shr.h26.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>And *, that post #10 is one great excerpt read, as is your articulate opening paragraph. </p>

<p>jovenes, many people (naturally! logically!) assume that since the University system provides a great education, and the State University System a good education & certainly many opportunities, that K-12 bears some resemblance. (Wrong!) </p>

<p>So what you get is the State cream-of-the-crop seniors entering U.C. from the best publics (& often largely educated elsewhere) & from a significant percentage of privates. A much larger segment of public high school seniors are not even in the running for U.C. Most of thestudents I'm acquainted with will be looking for a job or going to community college. A few will qualify for the State University system. An <em>occasional</em> senior qualifies for a lower level U.C. campus.</p>

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<p>Epiphany-- bravo---IMO, you couldn't be more correct! We did a 3 year "stint" in California starting back when my kids were 3 and 5. Originally from the midwest, I loved living in a place where people went on vacation. That said, I was shocked at the public school system. In addition to job opportunities that eventually sent us back to Chicago (and me being terribly homesick for friends and family) I was adamant that I couldn't fathom raising kids there within the public school system. When D started kindergarten at a private school, our friend's D started at our public school and the differences made me cry. Proposition 13's effects were horrid--the end result was making everything far less than mediocre, and the mind-set of coming up with "quick fixes" (with disasterous consequences) was ingrained within the government. In my feeble mind, I'd hoped that things had improved in the 12 years since we left there....</p>

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<p>... and when you (a system) tries to be too many things to too many people, you rarely succeed. Division of the State has been seriously explored (North/South, or North/Middle/South). Presents economic challenges regarding business interchange, "OOS" airline fare, water delivery, tax revenues. Complicated. This is why people scream about environmental planning (looking <em>ahead</em>) and why well thought-out and executed immigration policies are crucial to the health of a state and a nation.</p>

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<p>Hmm...when did this proposition occur? I moved from California to New Jersey about 5 years ago (so end of 7th grade then) and I thought the education in my elementary/middle schools was perfectly fine. But they were blue ribbon schools too so I guess that made somewhat of a difference?</p>

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<p>Well, jovenes, note that I did mention that there is a core group of excellent publics, that were excellent both before & after Prop 13. And since that Prop., the well enriched districts with strong property tax support & amazing parental advocacy & involvement have also supplemented with private fundraising the needs that the State (through Prop. 13 & unrelated budget cuts) has not delivered. Mid-level and low-performance schools were never in a position to do this, and there are far more of those 2 categories than high-rent schools. There have also been occasional survival success stories of one or another mid-level school, but generally this has been the exception.</p>