

America as Texas vs. California, Part II - cwan
http://blog.american.com/?p=9079

======
blahedo
Summary: Texas is better at education than California.

My response: They're sure as hell better in technical areas. Texas has put a
lot of money and effort into funding and licensing STEM teachers at the
secondary level (and maybe earlier). At the AP CS exam reading every year,
Texas is always very well represented, and I'm always a little jealous of the
level of support they get just in terms of state standards and that kind of
thing. (Another state you might not expect is Georgia, actually. The state
universities there have done a lot to raise awareness in their feeder schools
---i.e. the high schools in the state---of the importance of computation and
CS.)

~~~
Retric
Yet, California has ~14% higher per capita GDP for some reason (Edit: Climate,
location, etc). So Texas spends more of its GDP per person on education
because California only spends an extra 12% on education.

PS: What's with the down vote the article talks about each states GDP for a
reason, but ignores that difference when comparing education spending. Areas
with higher GDP have higher costs as well. People love to dump on California
but it's got a higher than average GDP compared to the rest of the USA so it's
not completely broken.

~~~
robotrout
If it were a closed system (walled borders), that might be more true. However,
judging a state as "doing well based on GDP", when it happens to have
Hollywood, Napa Valley, Silicon Valley, and La Jolla, I think would be
ignoring immigrants to California and geographical luck too much.

In other words. There's good chance, if you're a wealthy Californian, you're
an immigrant to California, or you're exploiting it's geographical assets
(coast, sunshine, soil). To give the credit to the state government or the
school system for those things seems a bit generous.

~~~
btilly
I agree that it is easy to miss the power of immigration.

However it is also easy to miss the power of key laws whose influence is so
pervasive that nobody even thinks about them. For instance take Silicon
Valley. I firmly believe that one of the reasons that took off in California
is that California law says that anything you do on your own time with your
own equipment is yours. Period. And no, you can't sign that away.

This makes it extremely difficult to contest an employee who gets a startup
going then leaves to further their startup. Which stops legal challenges that
otherwise would kill the Silicon Valley startup culture.

I am not a lawyer, but my belief is that Texas law is the same as the default
in most of the USA - if you are a professional employee with the wrong
contract then work you do on your own time with your own equipment that
relates to the skills you are hired for belong to your employee. I personally
know people in other states who tried the whole "start a startup, then leave
you job for it" thing under regulations like that who were flat out told, "You
can quit if you want but everything that you've done for that startup belongs
to us." Not a fun situation.

That fact is one of the reasons why I, personally, choose to live in
California.

So yes, luck. But yes, state law as well.

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w00pla
This is one aspect of the USA that is extremely good. There is space for
states to do different things. If something doesn't work, people have the
ability to vote with their feet.

Another aspect of this is the right to work laws vs. pro-Union laws in some
states.

It would be sad if this aspect of the USA disappears (with a more powerful
federal government).

~~~
Retric
Clearly, it’s a highly chaotic system, so simple assumptions don’t always
reflect reality’s for incredibly complex reasons.

A counter intuitive aspect of this is that areas which increased government
spending on things like police, parks, schools, or roads could attract
individuals with a higher income to live and or work. Which can result in a
lower tax rate even as the local government continues to spend more money. And
rich people tend to cluster by other rich people, and get surrounded by the
slightly less affluent etc, so high properly values tend to discourage crime
etc.

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ryanelkins
I hate these assessment tests. Having done all my schooling through high
school in Texas and having a mother who still works in the elementary system
there I know that they like to focus largely on testable material, almost to
the exclusion of everything else.

Schools and teachers are judged very closely on how their students perform on
standardized tests and so anything not on the test is generally given a
cursory briefing if it's mentioned at all. I definitely like being able to
measure things and see charts and graphs but this seems to be one of those
things where the presence of these metrics has drastically altered the way the
programs operate.

~~~
hexis
"[T]his seems to be one of those things where the presence of these metrics
has drastically altered the way the programs operate."

I think this was actually the whole point.

~~~
ryanelkins
My point is that I don't think that it is a good thing. Classes start to focus
exclusively on underperforming students - which is good - but not to the
exclusion of well performing students who need to be challenged as well.

Of course, Texas is the state who (at one time at least) had the educational
program that focused on "The Three Rs" (Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic). Ugh.
And they wonder why the US is behind.

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ilamont
There's not enough data in this post or the earlier one by Streeter to
evaluate this thesis, and no discussion of specific data points relating to
trade, industrial segments, population trends, regional disparities within the
two states, etc.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
And I don't see how they can discuss the sorry state of California without
mentioning those marvelously wonky ballot initiatives (give us unlimited
services but don't raise our taxes) that are the real source of the problem.
And don't forget that this is the American Enterprise Institute talking - the
story is skewed and filtered to fit their world view.

~~~
anamax
> give us unlimited services but don't raise our taxes

Except that that's not true.

Income and sales taxes are, in principle, unlimited. (Prop 13 is actually
keeping city and county revenues from cratering - my property taxes went UP
this year thanks to prop 13.) And the amount spent on voter mandated services
doesn't dominate the budget. (There's a 50% on education requirement, but
that's just a tax on spending on other things.)

CA added a lot of programs and spending since the golden era, almost all by
legislative action. How much of it made things better?

CA's govt is incapable of prioritizing within the constraints laid out by
voters. Yes, if voters say spend money on something, that means that the
legislature may have to go without some program that they'd like.

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baguasquirrel
The which-state-is-richer bit is a huge fallacy. I would argue it's much more
difficult for an education system to function in much of California because of
the wealth gap created by the tech and entertainment industries. These
industries poach a lot of talent, much like the way the finance industry did
in NYC. If I still lived in NYC, I'd probably be teaching on the side because
my day job would be boring. But I'm in California, so I'm going to try at a
startup instead.

This wealth gap also makes it difficult to educate disadvantaged kids because
similarly, the rich districts poach teachers from the poor districts. Again,
first-hand experience in NYC, and I see the same factors at play here in the
Bay Area. Only up in SF where you have an abundance of lifestyle ( _cough_
hipsters _cough_ ) folks do you have schools that are much better than their
funding levels ought to indicate.

All said, it's probably not a good idea to raise your kid in a state where the
economics are tilted against the education system. So yea, Texas wins... but
that's a pretty stupid win.

