Liberal Media Bias: Hearting Wisconsin, Hating Texas.

It was once said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Well, a couple of recent pieces published by liberals happen to have all three!

In a continued desparate attempt to support the spoiled brats known as the protesting Wisconsin public school teachers, Paul Krugman at the NY Times tries to paint Texas as a hell-on-earth for its children in the areas of economic stability, education, and health. Why Texas? In a heart-wrenching piece titled, “Leaving Children Behind,” Krugman writes:

[I]n 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. …

Furthermore, The Economist recently provides this tidbit:

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.

The implication being made is that Texas’ dismal high school graduation rate, low ACT/SAT rankings, high percentage of children without health insurance, percentage of children in poverty, percentage of children in decent health, etc., etc. is the result of the state’s low spending per pupil, low taxes, and no collective bargaining for public union teachers.

It’s a typical leftist argument. Everything bad is the result of not enough spending, not enough taxes, not enough public union influence, not enough government. And therefore, the solution to these ills is more spending, more taxes, more public union influence, and more government. It’s the record on the liberal phonograph that spins and spins so often that one often wonders whether they even listen to the lyrics as they sing along.

Now, as is often the case with liberals’ arguments, not only are the conclusions wrong and assumptions questionable, but the data used to form these conclusions are unreliable.

Dave at the Iowahawk blog (h/t Aaron Gee at American Thinker’s blog) explains why.

… 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.

What is the percentage of black students in Wisconsin compared to Texas? 4% to 12%. How about Hispanic students? 4% to a whopping 30%. So, when you take into account the unfortunately indisputable fact that blacks and Hispanics perform below their white counterparts, pitting the average ACT/SAT scores, dropout rates, etc. means bupkus. Of course a lily-white state like Wisconsin is going to look good on paper compared to Texas, which is being overrun by illegal aliens and nearly a third of whose students are Hispanic.

In order for the arguments about Wisconsin vs. Texas to hold water, therefore, one would need to compare the scores of students divided by ethnic group. It’s Statistics 101. (But I guess when you’re a liberal ideologue writing for a liberal propaganda rag like the NY Times, Statistics 101 goes by the wayside.)

Lo and behold, Iowahawk Dave found such data at the website of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (One must ask, were such easily accessible statistics unknown to Krugman or deliberately ignored by him?)

Observing the data therein, you will find that (in 2009) in the following 18 scores, accounting for ethnicity, Texas whoops Wisconsin’s ass in 17 of them (in 4th grade science, Hispanic Wisconsin students beat their Texan counterparts by a statistically irrelevant 2 points). Furthermore, also accounting for ethnicity, Texas surpasses the national average in all 18 scores; Wisconsin in only 8:

2009 4th Grade Math

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

2009 8th Grade Math

White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)

2009 4th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)

2009 8th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)

2009 4th Grade Science

White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)

2009 8th Grade Science

White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)

That paints a very different picture of the quality of education in Paul Krugman’s beloved Wisconsin vs. the reviled Texas.

Things go from bad to worse for The Economist when you look at some observant readers' comments. One commenter questions the SAT/ACT data itself:

You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, Economist, for reporting such garbage!

Here is the ACT's own website!!!

http://www.act.org/news/data/10/states.html

Virginia ranks 14th on ACT for 2010, and Wisconsin ranks 18th! Also, only 4% of the top Wisconsin students take the SAT!

And other commenter to this Economist piece provides the racial/ethnic breakup of the other states with (supposedly) the crummiest ACT/SAT scores:

Wisconsin is 91.5% white. Here are the bottom 5 states from above: South Carolina: 69% white, North Carolina: 75% white, Georgia: 68% white, Texas: 48% white, Virginia: 69% white.

With regard to Krugman’s dig about high school graduation rates (and believe me, 61% is pitiful for any state), here is what Dave found in this 2006-7 report from the National Center for Education Statistics:

Event Dropout Rates for 9th-12th graders during 2006-7 school year:

White students: Texas 1.9%, Wisconsin 1.2% (national average 3.0%)
Black students: Texas 5.8%, Wisconsin 7.8% (national 6.8%)
Hispanic students: Texas 5.6%, Wisconsin 5.2% (national 6.5%)

Hispanic students in Texas drop out at a statistically negligible higher rate than in Wisconsin, but again, Hispanics account for 30% of Texas’ students, compared to a measly 4% in Wisconsin. And look at Wisconsin’s black dropout rate: 2 full percentage points higher than the Lone Star State. Which begs the question, and indeed, Dave asks it: why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?”

Dave concludes:

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. …

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.

Conclusion: instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it’s time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State.

And certain contributors to The Economist better take a refresher course in Statistics 101.

Incidentaly, I was curious how other states fared with math, reading, and science scores. I picked three of the other states that, in addition to Texas, prohibit collective bargaining - North and South Carolina and Virginia (in red). Of states that have aggressive collective bargaining like Wisconsin, I chose New Jersey, New York, and Illinois (in blue). The national average is in gold.

Math: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
NJ 255	TX 231	NC 236		NJ 302	TX 272	TX 277
TX / NC 254	NJ 228	VA 234		TX 301	VA 268	VA/NC 274
VA 251	NC 226	TX 233		NC 297	NJ 267	NJ 272
WI 250	VA / NY 225	SC / NJ 232		NY/IL/WI/VA/ Nat’l 294	SC 263	SC 269
IL 249	Nat’l 222	NY 231		SC 293	NC 262	WI 268
NY/Nat’l 248	SC 220	WI 228			Nat’l 260	NY 262
SC 245	WI 217	IL/Nat’l 227			IL 255	Nat’l 260
	IL 216				WI 254

 Reading: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
NJ 237	TX/NJ 213	VA 214		NJ 281	NJ/VA 250	SC 259
VA 234	VA 210	NJ 213		NY 275	TX 249	VA/NJ 256
NY 233	NY 209	NY/TX 210		IL 274	NY 246	IL 252
TX 232	NC/Nat’l 204	SC 205		TX 273	Nat’l 245	TX 251
IL 231	SC 200	NC/Nat’l 204		VA 272	NC/SC/IL 243	WI 250
NC 230	IL 198	IL 203		WI/Nat’l 271	WI 238	NC 249
Nat’l 229	WI 192	WI 202		NC 270		Nat’l 248
WI 227				SC 267		NY 247
SC 226

 Science: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
VA 172	VA 144	VA 152		TX 167	VA 141	VA 144
TX 168	TX 139	SC 140		VA 166	NJ/TX 133	TX 141
NJ 166	NJ 138	WI/NJ 138		WI/NJ 165	SC 128	NJ 138
IL/WI 164	SC 129	TX 136		NY 164	NY 127	WI 134
SC 163	Nat’l 127	NC 132		IL 162	Nat’l 125	NC 132
NC/Nat’l 162	NC 126	NY/Nat’l 130		Nat’l 161	NC 121	IL/Nat’l 131
NY 161	NY 125	IL 129		NC/SC 158	WI 120	SC 129
	WI 121				IL 118	NY 125
	IL 120

 

From these data, one can observe that the supposedly wonderful collective bargaining states of Wisconsin and Illinois are consistently toward the bottom of the list; the supposedly heartless states of Texas and Virginia are consistently toward the top.

In fairness, one can't deny that my home state of New Jersey, where collectively bargaining public teachers union currently have the state in a fiscal stranglehold, has some impressive scores. It is also clear that in many areas, non-bargaining South Carolina has some pretty pitiful scores.

These numbers make it pretty clear, then, that the affect on scores by the presence/absence of public teacher collective bargaining is inconclusive.