Posted on 02/05/2008 12:04:30 PM PST by GoldwaterInstitute
Appalachazona? : Hispanic students excelling in other states with similar per-student spending
Matthew Ladner Goldwater Institute Daily Email February 05, 2008
Last week I refuted the notion that the rising Hispanic population will doom the Southwest to becoming the Appalachia of the 21st century with data from Florida. I’ve dug into the numbers further, and they tell an extraordinary story.
Figure 1 presents reading scores from Florida and Arizona for all students. Looking at the data, the obvious question to ask: what happened after 1998? Two words: Jeb Bush.
Jeb Bush was elected Governor of Florida in 1998, and implemented a tough reform program of rigorous academic standards and parental choice. Florida is the only state to do more than Arizona to expand parental choice in education in recent years, and unlike Arizona, its testing program has not been watered down.
Figures 2 and 3 present the truly awe-inspiring scale of the radical success of those reforms. Florida’s Hispanic students overtook all Arizona students by 2002. This isn’t a fluke. Florida’s Hispanic students outscore all Arizona students in fourth grade math and eighth grade reading as well. At current rates of improvement, Florida’s African American students will tie the Arizona average for all students by next year.
Florida spends about the same amount per pupil as Arizona, has a higher percentage of low-income children, and has a majority-minority K-12 population.
Florida’s lawmakers were able to put aside partisan bickering to enact a set of far-reaching education reforms in 1999 based on tough standards and parental choice and the results are clear. It is time for Arizona to follow suit.
Matthew Ladner is vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute
What?????? This makes no sense. Appalachia of the 21st century? I'm Appalachian, and I don't know what the hell you're talking about here...
I think he meant to say “an Appalachia of the 21st Century”, but I don’t get it either...
Sorry.
I think he meant to say “a 21st Century Appalachia”, but (apparently) I don’t get it either...
And yes, the Southwest will be the "Appalachia" of the 21st century.
Is Denver the next Detroit?
Carolyn
You know. Dirt poor inbred hicks swilling homemade liquor, eating possum stew and screwing their kin. Eventually, someone will create a show called The Beverly Wetbacks.
It's mostly a BIG myth. Were there once large isolated pockets "hillbillies" of Scots-Irish/German/Welsh/Cherokee/Shawnee descent living there? Yes, way back in the 1920s and 1930s at the latest. But, gross stereotype aside, "Appalachia" is just as modern today as downtown DC, perhaps more, with most folks wired to the internet and enjoying a decent standard of living, based on their blue collar and even white collar, professional jobs. My grandfather was an independent mine owner and my dad grew up in the 1950s in a thoroughly middle class household (with TV sets and telephones, by gosh!) And there are numerous people from Appalachia today serving in the U.S. military. "Hicks," they are not.
Are there still pockets of certain families who live there, way back up in the "hollers," who subscribe to the stereotype? Yes, but they are few and far between, and the media ALWAYS seeks them out to make their generalized statements about how poor and how bad off Appalachian folk are. It's really pathetic!
My point here is that the Goldwater Institutes's analogy is false and even disingenuous in the extreme.
I assume you meant that the Southwest will become more intelligent and prosperous in the 21st century, because I know you wouldn't insult an entire chunk of red state America.
The Hispanic population of Florida includes a large number of middle and upper class Cubans and South Americans, who came here with education and bourgeois values. Many are also of European ancestry.
By contrast, the Hispanic population of Arizona is overwhelmingly comprised of Mexicans of Amerindian heritage, many of whom are very poor.
Nowadays you have to assume that anything posted on the Internet gets read by everybody everywhere.
For punishment we're going to use Arizona as an example of the worst place on earth for the rest of the year.
As in, "Yes, things are bad in Burkina Faso, but still, it's not like it's Arizona or anything ..."
Are these Aboriginal/Mestizos, that you mention, some type of sub-human.
The difference is that there’s nobody left IN Appalachia. They’re all running south.
Meanwhile, corrupt big city interests and union cronies in NYC and Philly get to run things, especially in northern Appalachia, and the people who remain get the shaft.
I doubt Arizona will ever have that problem... unless they run out of water.
I think the point of a “different class” of Hispanics is well taken, although Florida does have plenty of illegals and migrant farmworkers.
Our proximity to Puerto Rico, South America and Cuba is responsible for the difference in backgrounds of a number of Hispanics. I don’t think it’s so much a racial (Caucasian Hispanic vs. Mestizo) difference as a social and educational difference.
However, the point of the article, which many here miss, is that Jeb Bush’s FCAT, which the teachers unions despise, by the way, has been a boon to education in Florida. It’s just sickening how the teachers cry, whine and gnash their teeth over the FCAT. I say I had to take plenty of standardized tests in school and how are we going to know how our kids are doing if we don’t have some sort of objective test?
They’d rather go all touchy-feely and socially promote. I say Hurrah! to the FCAT!!!
“My husband is from the Shenandoah valley, and I can tell you that the stereotype is wrong.”
It’s not just an Appalachian thing. I’m from Middle Tennessee and when I got to boot camp in 68’ some smart-mouth a**wipe from California asked me if we wore shoes there. Damn but I was mad.
No, they are human beings.
However, at the risk of provoking the wrath of the Admin Moderator, their average IQ is at least 5 points to the left of where it needs to be for them to have any hope of benefitting from formal education.
You need an IQ of about 90 to be able to tackle even the simplest introduction to the three R's [reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic], and their average IQ is down around 85, and might be substantially lower than that [Lynn & Vanhanen estimate an average IQ of 87 for Mexico, and 79 for Guatemala].
Again, to compare Aboriginal/Mestizo "Hispanic" academic performance with the academic performance of the descendants of the "Castilian" Caucasian "Hispanics" who fled Castro's overthrow of Batista is simply ludicrous.
And, quite frankly, it's absurd to use the same word ["Hispanic"] to describe two wildly disparate groups of people like that.
The Shenandoah Valley is the most beautiful place on the face of the earth.
If I ever strike it rich, I'm buying land here.
Sadly, it's not just Denver, or even the United States, but the entire world.
This is your future.
No, that's why I put "Appalachia" in quotes.
I actually live on the outskirts of Appalachia, and, as I was saying above, if I ever strike it big, then I'm heading for the Shenandoah Valley.
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