In point of fact, the governors of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland are Republicans (as are governors just elected in Vermont and New Hampshire). On the other hand, the governors of Hawaii, West Virginia, and Louisiana are Democrats.

Of the states (and D.C.) where Democrats had undivided control of government prior to this election, here are the rankings:

California: Rank 41 (C-)
Connecticut: Rank 5 (B-)
Delaware: Rank 16 (C+)
D.C. Rank 28 (C)
Hawaii: Rank 25 (C)
Oregon: Rank 39 (C-)
Rhode Island: Rank 13 (C+)

Not seeing much of a correlation.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2016/01/07/

And the ten largest school systems are all troubled and run by Democrats:
New York City 995,336
Los Angeles 667,273
Puerto Rico 437,202
Chicago 405,644
Miami-Dade, FL 347,366
Clark Co., NV 314,059
Broward Co., FL 256,472
Houston 204,245
Hills. Co., FL 194,525
Hawai’i 179,600

But this is quite literally a non-partisan issue. It’s not that either side is preferable — we need to get rid of the partisans and the interest groups altogether, regardless of their stripes.

And no, we have not seen any evidence or argument to justify perpetuating an archaic monopoly. You acknowledge that we have little or no experience with the alternative. And even if we did, only controlled experimentation could establish a factual basis for comparison.

But in the final analysis, school choice is a matter of simple justice for the child on whose behalf decisions are made, and for the family whose duty and right it is to make them.

Most the countries that are performing best have state-run school systems. We have very few private schools and even less charter schools. Private schools and religious schools have to follow the same curriculum as state schools, though all schools can chose how they teach it. There is your evidence that it can be done better and cheaper by the government.

Of course, those same countries don’t have half the country running teachers down, trying to pay them as little as possible, or allowing people to teach with few or no qualifications.

From Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2014/09/29/if-massachusetts-were-a-country-its-students-would-rank-9th-in-the-world/#376b19d21b12

According to a Free Enterprise infographic, the top US states in overall academic proficiency are, from 1-10: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, Minnesota, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those mostly Dem states?

From the same article:

According to Free Enterprise, the bottom 10 performing US states (the list includes the District of Columbia) are, from best to worst: Nevada, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Alabama, West Virginia, New Mexico, Louisiana, the District of Columbia and Mississippi.

Again – arent’t those mostly Rep states.

Yes, the pace of reform is too slow, although the reformers have done a valiant job fighting an uphill battle. School choice was nonexistent 30 years ago. Charter schools have blossomed, yet still account for only about 5% of total public school enrollment, and vouchers less than 1%. For that you can blame the corrupt extortion rackets (aka unions) that control most school systems. And the largest school systems are all run by Democrats. States where Republicans have undivided control of government make up less than half of the total student population.

School choice based on complete separation of school and state IS the only solution. There’s no going back. Government has no business running schools in an advanced economy. With the absurd sums we spend per pupil, it’s irrational to think that an average family could not get better value for money.

As for education resources being a function of property taxes, kindly show me where I’ve justified that or any other aspect of the status quo. To the contrary, I’m with Ms. DeVos when she says that every family should have the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children “regardless of their zip code.” (And by all means, yes, those opportunities should available WITHIN their zip codes, not across town.)

That being said, schools receive more state and federal aid today than ever before, yet performance has never been worse. Perhaps there are more important factors?

If the Republican governors are doing such a great job, why is the quality of education steadily falling under their watch?

Jeb Bush means well, and I think the Republicans would be a lot better off if he was the president-elect now. I think GWB meant well too when it comes to education. I have a major problem with his position on the Iraq War etc, but other than that I think he was a good man. I also think a lot of the governors have the kids best interests at heart, though a small number let religion dominate their thinking and that ruins their policy positions. But school choice is not a long-term or universal solution. It helps only a very small percentage of kids.

If you believe “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” which I agree is a good philosophy and one I would agree with, how can you justify policies like funding schools from property taxes so the poorer areas get little or nothing and the wealthy areas get wonderful schools?

It’s not possible to just bus all the kids in the poor areas to the rich areas, and even if you could, it’s still not fair. Because wealthy kids get to go to a school in their neighbourhood, and poor kids have to travel hours every day and don’t have that neighbourhood focus to pull the community together.

The kids are less able to engage in extra-curricular activities, and have less time for study in they have to travel a long way to school.

Then there’s the 10% who get motion sickness (like me) who would spend all day feeling ill and unable to learn (or eat), and be unable to eat or study when they got home after the second trip of the day. A lot of disabled kids struggle with buses. And we all know humanity hasn’t got rid of bullying yet, and that would make travelling difficult for a whole lot more, extending their horror.

As it happens, it’s been Republican governors who have been at the forefront of education reform for the past 30 years (most prominently Jeb Bush), while your pals the Dems have had their heads firmly planted in the sand (with a few exceptions from the business world like Bill Gates). The unions naturally fight reform tooth and nail.

The Reagan administration catalyzed the reform movement with a landmark report called “A Nation at Risk”. Test scores already were in decline, and concern already was growing that education trends would threaten our economic vitality and competitiveness. Anybody paying attention (including many rank-and-file teachers) has long known how dire the situation is.

That being said, I doubt many Americans have heard of PISA, or would give much weight to the opinions of international technocrats. My comments regarding PISA have to do not with the need for reform, which is a given, but rather with whether PISA actually provides any meaningful information.

(Overlooking the snarky comment about my grasp of undergraduate statistics…) Sample size is just one consideration. A valid sample must be selected in an unbiased fashion from a homogeneous population or sub-population. Needless to say, if you’re going to draw conclusions about the whole American student population, then you’re talking about an extraordinarily heterogeneous phenomenon. And a sampling methodology that selects first by locale and institution is biased right off the bat by self-selection, inasmuch as a school’s participation is voluntary. Moreover, a given school’s test-takers inevitably will have more in common with each other (including the same teachers) than would be the case for a similar cohort randomly selected from the broader population.

As mentioned already, Pres. Bush worked out a compromise with liberal Democrats to jack up federal aid in return for some very modest reforms. One result is that there are tons of achievement data that are more current and much more comprehensive than something like PISA. And those data models are designed with our society, demographics, and educational practices in view.

I’ll summarize my position on resourcing as: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” I’m sure you agree.

You’re mixing a general comment about maths worldwide with one about the US in particular, there were more comments than just that one, and that’s just the summary report.

PISA is supposed to represent 10 years in the local school system. And you need to read up on how sample sizes are determined in statistics.

As you could probably tell from that summary report, when comparing data within countries all sorts of criteria are taken into account. And you can’t just dismiss the results because you don’t like them. The US appears to have a lower proportion of top students these days too, so even the better schools are no longer doing as good a job as they used to.

In New Zealand we have owned the fact that we’re not doing as well as we used to and are trying to do better. All you can do is find things to complain about and make up reasons to dismiss the results. That might be your problem right there.

And NZers have heard of PISA. Is it general knowledge amongst USians? Or do all those Republican governors hide these results from the general public? Do USians know how badly their education system performs internationally? Do they know what the international experts recommend? Or are they too busy blaming it all on teachers and their unions? (Our teachers are unionized too by the way. Doesn’t stop them doing a great job.)

Your ideas for funding do nothing to address the inequities in the system.

For goodness sake. Any excuse.

I thought that was why we needed religion – so people are good even when no one is looking.

Or do people in your world only do their best when they’re going to get something out of it?

Is doing your best for its own sake an alien concept to you?

Perhaps Republican and Christian school students are dragging down the results of Democrat and atheist ones? 😉

If we’re going to use the PISA numbers to talk about elementary and secondary education in general, then we’re saying the 6,000 test-takers represent the entire US elementary/secondary student population of 55,000,000.

I realize PISA claims to select its test-taking schools randomly, but that of course is not at all the same as a random sample of the whole student population. Indeed, the student sample inevitably will be skewed toward an unrepresentative group of communities and even (as mentioned) of teachers. Beyond that flaw, a model that reflected all the nuances of American education and society would take some serious data science, and I see no indication that PISA has that degree of sophistication.

Again, I don’t need to be convinced that education in the USA needs reform. But that said, I find the PISA report pretty superficial and unpersuasive.

I don’t see where the PISA report “confirms the strong link between school funding in the US and poor performance in PISA.” In fact it says the opposite: “[H]igher expenditure on education is not highly predictive of better mathematics scores in PISA.” It suggests that “disadvantaged” schools suffer from teacher shortages, but it doesn’t say the shortages are due to funding. (Often they have more to do with safety and discipline issues.) In any case, I’ve already suggested my solution for more equitable funding.

Where did you get 55 million? They’re only testing 15 year olds, and there are 28 million of those in the participating countries. The 161 schools were chosen randomly. There are statistical models that tell you how many people you need to select in a given population to ensure the selection is representative. They used those models. More than half a million out of 28 million is pretty good actually.

Perhaps you should read the PISA report for the US. It does not make for pretty reading. I didn’t read this before I wrote my post, and I wish I had because there are a few things I would have added, like the fact that if common core was adopted properly, students would do better in PISA. It confirms the strong link between school funding in the US and poor performance in PISA as well. Here’s the link: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf