In
Iowahawk's take-down of Paul Krugman's recent stupidity on the subject of state rankings via ACT/SAT scores, he writes this:
Perhaps because a state's "average ACT/SAT" is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. 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.
Please note: this has nothing to do with innate ability or aptitude. Quite to the contrary, I believe the test gap between minority students and white students can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status. And poverty. And yes, racism.
Can somebody please postulate for me how poverty makes one innately stupid? The "education" establishment makes available the avenues by which to learn to read, write and cipher and yet that cannot compensate for poverty?
Were millions uneducable during the Depression because they were poor?
As I've previously written, we're having school budget "discussions" in my county. Just recently I'm told I have no gratitude for the benefits granted to me (as a result of having my property taxes confiscated to barely and mis-educate other peoples' children) of "investing" in future doctors, carpenters, blahblahblah, as though no one anywhere would learn anything about anything without the educrats. No gratitude expected from other people for the two-fold benefit of having my taxes for
their children, nope.
I'm the ungrateful misanthrope.
I am so wearily disgusted by the endless blathering about what passes for education in this country - and the concomitant purported lack of "funding" - that I could just