(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
There was fierce posting last week here and at Flypaper on the Massachusetts Miracle and what role the unions did or did not do in thwarting said miracle. The question I’ll raise: does MA’s improvement deserve the title of miracle?
MA has the highest NAEP scores in the country, and they’ve improved in recent years, so they don’t have anything to be ashamed of when it comes to education reform. Superficially, they outshine everyone.
However, MA is also a very wealthy and fairly homogenous state. NAEP lists their free and reduced lunch eligible students at 28.9% (which is low) and their percentage of Anglo children at 72.9% which is pretty high. Spending per pupil is listed at over $12,000 per pupil.
My favorite education reform state, Florida, spends less and has a far more demographically challenging K-12 demographic profile. And…they’ve made much more progress with difficult to educate students.
Looking at progress among the most difficult to educate students gives us a good view of which state has made the most progress. This effectively controls for MA being wealthy and pale. Figures 1 and 2 present data from the 4th grade reading exam.
Among free and reduced lunch eligible Hispanics, Florida has made a great deal more progress than MA- 16 point improvement in MA, a 27 point improvement in Florida.
MA outperforms the national average, but by a mere three points. Florida doubled the improvement of the national average.
The same is true among free and reduced lunch eligible African American students. MA improved by nine points, the national average improved by ten points, and Florida improved by twenty four points.
Again, MA doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of given their highest scores. There are other wealthy and homogenous states that spend a great deal on their public schools- and MA clobbers them. For me, however, when it comes to education reform…
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Graphmaster Matt – nice post.
Great charts.
What story does 8th grade data tell?