6 ms·

Disaggregating the results by race is real cute but also misses the point: blacks and asians and hispanics are residents of the state too and so leaving them in

Disaggregating the results by race is real cute but also misses the point: blacks and asians and hispanics are residents of the state too and so leaving them in to evaluate the state's overall achievement (relative to other states) in education is fair. If anything it ought to be more problematic that Texas fails so badly at educating hispanic students when a fifth of them live in Texas. Besides, the race in big-gap states is an unwitting proxy to income, so disaggregate by household per capita income (relative to local cost of living) if you want to disdain. This methodology would work well in all states and expose the challenges of anxiety and the quality of a student's home life in their education attainment.

theparanoid 8y ago
> race here is an an unwitting proxy to income, so disaggregate by household per capita income Poor white students do better academically than well off black students. So splitting by race is more informative when discussing academic performance.
- purple-again 8y ago
  Do you have some evidence to back that up? There are some dumb rich people, no doubt of every color, however there is a clear correlation between income and performance in every reputable source I’ve ever seen. I find it hard to believe that on average rich black kids are doing worse than on average poor white kids.
  - grandmczeb 8y ago
    Here's a study[1] that breaks down SAT scores by race and income in 2003. Take a look at table 2. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7a0/dfdee8ad5b91e1d179e9e2e838a4952f00be.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7a0/dfdee8ad5b91e1d179e9e2...
    - ckemere 8y ago
      I believe that study shows that the affect of race on SAT scores when a more complex model of income and parental education is taken into account is halved (i.e., the observed 100 pt difference drops to 50). So I think it still doesn't excuse the original post from taking income into account.
      - grandmczeb 8y ago
        Yes, a multifaceted approach that takes into account lots of factors would be ideal. It’s still better than existing rankings though, which just use a statewide average.
rayiner 8y ago
"Disaggregation" doesn't mean taking them out--the ranking includes everyone: > Think about that: White students do better in Texas than in Iowa. Black students do better in Texas. Hispanic students do better in Texas. Asian students do better in Texas. Given these facts, it is absurd for U.S. News to rank Iowa higher than Texas in terms of educational performance. This, of course, makes sense. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds face unique challenges. Under the traditional methodology, states can do a crappy job of educating these students so long as they have few of them. States that have large populations of disadvantaged students, by contrast, are penalized in the rankings even if they do a relatively better job educating those students.
- moultano 8y ago
  I'm surprised to find no mention of SES or income in the article. There can be similar Simpson's paradox effects within racial groups between states (for instance, Iowa might have more low SES white people than Texas). I would have expected this to be mentioned in the article for why they chose not to account for it in some form.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Simpson's Paradox is the relevant keyword here. Averaging a across non-homogeneous groups (multimodal distributions) makes garbage statisics
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> If anything it ought to be more problematic that Texas fails so badly at educating hispanic students when a fifth of them live in Texas. Texas doesn't do badly at educating Hispanic students -- it does a superior job at that. It has low overall performance because Hispanic students have terrible performance, and Texas, even though its Hispanic students are better than average, has a very large number of them. This kind of thing is generally known as Simpson's Paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
- temp-dude-87844 8y ago
  All good points, and clarifies my wording about Texas doing a good job (relative to other states) of educating Hispanic students that suggested otherwise. But the widely divergent results between the aggregated and disaggregated view isn't sufficient to declare, like the article does, that the ranking using aggregated view are using a flawed methodology. They're measuring different factors than the authors of the article, and the nuances of both are equally squashed under the pressure of producing a simple metric. Cohorts are useful because they capture a group with some shared attribute, and racial cohorts are particularly useful because they're overwhelmingly consistent through time and datasource for a particular person. The disaggregation into racial cohorts in a ranking like this would be a useful indicator of how the outcomes of a particular person would change solely by moving states. But it's not an effective indicator of evaluating a state taxpayer's contribution to the quality of students coming out of the state's schools -- students who presumably perpetuate the results of the quality of their education in their life, producing a myriad of poorly-understood impacts on the state as they do so. Both of them are worthwhile questions to answer, but they're very different studies. But one calling another flawed on the basis of this is jarring.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    Why isn't it an effective indicator for evaluating how much state taxpayers are getting for their contribution to the state schools? Can you elaborate on the difference between the two questions?
btilly 8y ago
It depends on what question you're trying to answer. "How well does the average student do?" vs "If you raise a family there, how well will your children do?" For the former question, you don't want to control for racial mixture. For the latter question, you do. Most parents should care more about the latter question than the former.
pg_bot 8y ago
I would suggest you read up on Simpson's paradox.[0] The study is not eliminating their performance just categorizing them. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

theparanoid 8y ago

> race here is an an unwitting proxy to income, so disaggregate by household per capita income Poor white students do better academically than well off black students. So splitting by race is more informative when discussing academic performance.

purple-again 8y ago
Do you have some evidence to back that up? There are some dumb rich people, no doubt of every color, however there is a clear correlation between income and performance in every reputable source I’ve ever seen. I find it hard to believe that on average rich black kids are doing worse than on average poor white kids.
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  Here's a study[1] that breaks down SAT scores by race and income in 2003. Take a look at table 2. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7a0/dfdee8ad5b91e1d179e9e2e838a4952f00be.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7a0/dfdee8ad5b91e1d179e9e2...
  - ckemere 8y ago
    I believe that study shows that the affect of race on SAT scores when a more complex model of income and parental education is taken into account is halved (i.e., the observed 100 pt difference drops to 50). So I think it still doesn't excuse the original post from taking income into account.
    - grandmczeb 8y ago
      Yes, a multifaceted approach that takes into account lots of factors would be ideal. It’s still better than existing rankings though, which just use a statewide average.

rayiner 8y ago

"Disaggregation" doesn't mean taking them out--the ranking includes everyone: > Think about that: White students do better in Texas than in Iowa. Black students do better in Texas. Hispanic students do better in Texas. Asian students do better in Texas. Given these facts, it is absurd for U.S. News to rank Iowa higher than Texas in terms of educational performance. This, of course, makes sense. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds face unique challenges. Under the traditional methodology, states can do a crappy job of educating these students so long as they have few of them. States that have large populations of disadvantaged students, by contrast, are penalized in the rankings even if they do a relatively better job educating those students.

moultano 8y ago
I'm surprised to find no mention of SES or income in the article. There can be similar Simpson's paradox effects within racial groups between states (for instance, Iowa might have more low SES white people than Texas). I would have expected this to be mentioned in the article for why they chose not to account for it in some form.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Simpson's Paradox is the relevant keyword here. Averaging a across non-homogeneous groups (multimodal distributions) makes garbage statisics

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> If anything it ought to be more problematic that Texas fails so badly at educating hispanic students when a fifth of them live in Texas. Texas doesn't do badly at educating Hispanic students -- it does a superior job at that. It has low overall performance because Hispanic students have terrible performance, and Texas, even though its Hispanic students are better than average, has a very large number of them. This kind of thing is generally known as Simpson's Paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

temp-dude-87844 8y ago
All good points, and clarifies my wording about Texas doing a good job (relative to other states) of educating Hispanic students that suggested otherwise. But the widely divergent results between the aggregated and disaggregated view isn't sufficient to declare, like the article does, that the ranking using aggregated view are using a flawed methodology. They're measuring different factors than the authors of the article, and the nuances of both are equally squashed under the pressure of producing a simple metric. Cohorts are useful because they capture a group with some shared attribute, and racial cohorts are particularly useful because they're overwhelmingly consistent through time and datasource for a particular person. The disaggregation into racial cohorts in a ranking like this would be a useful indicator of how the outcomes of a particular person would change solely by moving states. But it's not an effective indicator of evaluating a state taxpayer's contribution to the quality of students coming out of the state's schools -- students who presumably perpetuate the results of the quality of their education in their life, producing a myriad of poorly-understood impacts on the state as they do so. Both of them are worthwhile questions to answer, but they're very different studies. But one calling another flawed on the basis of this is jarring.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Why isn't it an effective indicator for evaluating how much state taxpayers are getting for their contribution to the state schools? Can you elaborate on the difference between the two questions?

btilly 8y ago

It depends on what question you're trying to answer. "How well does the average student do?" vs "If you raise a family there, how well will your children do?" For the former question, you don't want to control for racial mixture. For the latter question, you do. Most parents should care more about the latter question than the former.

pg_bot 8y ago

I would suggest you read up on Simpson's paradox.[0] The study is not eliminating their performance just categorizing them. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox