(H/T – Jon Ham)
Jon wondered how Durham, North Carolina ranked 20th in Forbes’ current list of Top 20 Places to Educate Your Child. The story from The Hearld-Sun pointed out that “(t)he article does not consider student achievement, dropouts or suspensions "” some of the more common factors used to determine school system success.”
Instead, Forbes used a 5-part criteria, with the public-school portion consisting of “the metro area’s average number of students per full-time equivalent classroom teacher (the lower the better) with its average instructional expense figure for student (the higher the better)”. In short, it was how many teachers and how much money was thrown at how few students. Guess that explains why Milwaukee got an “A” in that department. At least Forbes notes that “an impressive 18% of (K-12 students) attend one of Milwaukee’s exceptional private schools”, and the private-school portion of the grade was an “A+”.
As a side note, Madison was 2nd.
Revisions/extensions (12:35 pm 12/24/2007) – I need to learn to proof-read. Sorry about that, Mr. Ham.
Perhaps there was a crack pipe involved?