Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Iowahawk took time out from his busy schedule as the web’s premiere political satirist to evaluate some claims Paul Krugman and The Economist made about the educational achievements of Texas.

Wait, did I say “evaluate?” I meant “demolish like a bulldozer ripping through a condemned shantytown” (or an “Obamaville,” if you prefer). Kruggers and the EcoMen (which, I have to point out, would be a good name for a rock band) have been as thoroughly pwned as a hungover frat boy waking up after a late-night kegstand to find male genitalia Magic Markered across his face. It’s an epic take-down.

Let’s start with assertions that started the whole thing, and which exemplify a specific type of liberal desire to wish away Texas’ deeply inconvenient economic success. From Krugman:

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

Next comes the bit from The Economist:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

With that background, you’re now ready for Iowahawk to demolish the subject like Charlie Sheen demolishes an ounce of cocaine. First, the necessary context:

A state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there.

Actually this is not strictly true; it’s more accurate to say its a proxy for the percent of white and Asian people who live there. But close enough for government work.

Iowahawk goes on:

In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students – regardless of state residence – tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.

But don’t take his word for it. Take his facts for it, as he provides grade-by-grade comparisons of each of the two sates students broken down demographically (by white, black and Hispanic students). Go over and take a look at the data if you haven’t already. His conclusion:

To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students.

He does the same job for Krugman’s dropout rates:

White and Hispanic Texas students indeed seem to dropout at a higher rate than their counterparts in Wisconsin, although in both cases (a) the difference is not statistically significant; and (b) in both cases, both states are significantly below the national average. Among black high school students, Texans have significantly lower dropout rates than their national cohort and Wisconsinites. Black high school students in Wisconsin have significantly higher dropout rates than national.

Your first question is probably, “why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?” Sorry, can’t help you there, I’m stumped too.

Ouch! You know that’s going to leave a scar…