Best and Worst States: Recent Comments

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2010-03-02T04:18:13Z

Another thing to point out is that you cannot cherry pick individual states stats to support your thesis. Rather, you need to looks at all states and determine if there is an overall correlation between spending and test scores. Then you have to see if that relationship effect is significant. Lastly, I agree that SAT scores are not a good way to measure education outcomes, especially when different states have different rules skewing the data pool. Another confounding factor is that some students usually take a Kaplan SAT prep course which further skews the results.

Nice try. I'd also like to know if more spending on education yields better results overall, but then again, not all spending is the same. Some schools may use their funding to purchase materials, or build classrooms, or pay for better teachers (one whould hope), or just squander it on shiny things. My guess is that spending does help, but you can't just throw money at the problem and at some point the returns begin to diminish.

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2010-02-14T14:09:56Z

Ed,
No, spending more has no direct linear correlation to higher quality in education. But voting to spend more money on education does correlate with increasing a legislators reelection chances.

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2010-01-24T01:07:59Z

The flaw in this logic is that in most cases the sat is an elected exam. You are most like looking at the top X % of the students, where X is the number of students who took the exam.

In the examples you gave, you are saying that the average student in the top 6% of Utah is a better test taker than the student in the top 64% of Vermont.

Better information would come from a nation test that everyone takes, or looking at graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and college graduation rates.

Comment on Connecticut Worst State for Tax Burden, Oklahoma the Best

2010-01-13T04:42:32Z

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Comment on Are Business Friendly States Best for Jobs?

2009-12-18T05:27:49Z

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Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2009-12-05T01:31:18Z

As a Mainer I would like to stick up for our low SAT scores and explain why they are low. Maine is the only state that mandates all Juniors take the SAT, which means low achieving students and special education students take the test. In most states only students that are looking to go on to college will take the SAT. This brings downs Maine’s average and makes it look worse than we really are when we are actually trying to help our students by paying for a test some may not be able to afford.

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2009-10-30T14:04:02Z

Editors Note:

While I agree some states encourage the taking of the ACT over the SAT, the table is still useful. Money clearly does not deliver more results in education.

I provide participation rates for 2009 SAT Scores by State at State SAT Scores 2009 and caution readers in my post to carefully look at the data. Yet there are huge gaps in spend versus results in certain states.

New Jersey for example ranks 3 in spend, at $13,238 and ranks 36^th in the 2009 State SAT score rankings. It has a 76% participation rate.

North Carolina ranks 44 at $7,835 in spending, ranks slightly lower at 39^th in SAT Scores and has 63% participation. New Jersey spends a whopping 70% more and gets similar results to North Carolina. It sure should raise some questions.

The other states I mention in the post have the following 2009 SAT participation rates: Vermont 64%, Iowa 3%, Maine 90% and Utah 6%. Utah which rates lowest in spend still appears to be great value for the money. Its ACT scores are above average at 21.8 and its ACT participation rate is 68%.

The question "Does Spending More on Education Work?" is still a valid one to debate.

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2009-10-30T11:45:32Z

Articles such as this are misleading. They should include the percentage of students in each state that actually take the SAT. In some states the percentage is quite high...while in others it is very low. If only the top 5-10% of students take the SAT in a given state, it is bound to look better than one where 65% take the test.

Comment on Does Spending More on Education Work? State Rankings of Education Spending.

2009-10-30T04:09:49Z

My question is on the SAT. Some states in the West have very small percentages of students taking the SAT. Most students take the ACT. How can you generalize the state performance when such a small percentage of college bound students take the measure you use? seems like a very poor methodology to me.

Comment on Best and Worst States for Individual Taxes, Maryland Worst, 6 States Best

2009-10-05T01:48:19Z

I liked this art article