<p>MYOS, I am not sure what goes on in every state, but I am very familiar with what is happening in Ca. I disagree with you; there has been remarkably very little change in the educational bureaucracy in Ca over the years. It is a top heavy system controlled by Sacramento politicians and teacher unions. </p>
<p>The educational code in Ca is longer than the US tax code. In Ca there are two educational bureaucracies, the districts and the county offices, both reporting to the state board. The county offices are a parallel system with county superintendents and a bloated administrative structure which has no line authority over any school in Ca. They spend hundreds of millions (collectively billions) of dollars on overhead. I spoke to the superintendent of the largest school system in my region, and he admitted that he has really no idea what they do for all that money.</p>
<p>In Los Angeles, parents are suing the state to overturn tenure and last-in-first-out seniority rules because their schools are losing some of the best teachers. Unbelievably, the state board of education and the teacher unions are fighting the lawsuit tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. Of course, when the head of the state board was a long-time union activist and a politician who taken millions of dollars from the unions, what else would you expect.</p>
<p>I’ve posted on this before: </p>
<p>And not that we shouldn’t strive for better for everyone, but America’s education system is a lot better than the stats seem to imply at a first glance. Here is the PISA report for 2009: <a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf”>http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf</a> (on page 14 you will see reading scores broken down by race). For convenience, I’ll tell you that Asian-Americans beat everyone except the city of Shanghai (which is about as useful a measure as measuring only the city of Cambridge, MA), White Americans beat everyone except Finland, South Korea, and a couple of lone cities which were measured. Hispanic-Americans (I believe this includes illegal immigrants - not sure though) beat every Latin American country which competed. Black Americans beat many countries around the world, including most of Latin America, the Middle East, and a few countries in Eastern Europe. No Sub-Saharan African countries participated in PISA, but Black Americans would have likely beat them had they. In 2009 the PISA only broke down scores by race for reading so I can’t compare science.</p>
<p>Controlling for poverty rate instead of race (on Page 15), America does very well still. In districts where the fewer than 10% of students receive free/reduced lunch, the scores are higher than anywhere except the city of Shanghai. In districts between 10-25%, America beats everyone except South Korea, Finland, and a cities. For 25-50%, about as well as the OCED average.</p>
<p>PISA has not released scores based on race or any measure of affluence based for Math or Science so I can’t compare those.</p>
<p>@jhs check your inbox please</p>