05-30-2003, 07:09 PM
Well in WI it appears that they aren't as good as public on some counts at least. Points 13 and 14 in this little list (http://www.nea.org/publiced/goodnews/wi01.html) indicate the public schools are doing more AP classes and that students are doing better on at leas the physics versions. My personal experience (class of 93 so the data is getting old) is the the public school students in southwest Wisconsin at least, didn't have any better education than the private school students. Some areas were better some were worse. But the better teachers tended to be at the public schools, and we all know how important the teacher is in the learning process.
Of course as you pointed out quite well the list that started this debate is worthless. How many tests given per students is a very poor metric for education quality. If you factor in the average results on those tests and maybe throw in the other standardized tests such as the ACT, SAT, etc, and maybe even do a money per student factor as well, graduation rates, yadda yadda (essentially make it closer to some of the college ranking systems) you might be able to get a much better metric of education quality, but using just this one component for a complex ranking like this is silly.
Of course as you pointed out quite well the list that started this debate is worthless. How many tests given per students is a very poor metric for education quality. If you factor in the average results on those tests and maybe throw in the other standardized tests such as the ACT, SAT, etc, and maybe even do a money per student factor as well, graduation rates, yadda yadda (essentially make it closer to some of the college ranking systems) you might be able to get a much better metric of education quality, but using just this one component for a complex ranking like this is silly.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.