Jeb!'s Florida Education Meh-racle
After watching Jeb! Bush talk about his Florida education "miracle" at Campbell's Brown's little union-bashing festival, I thought it would be instructive to make a quick graph:
I've standardized Florida's scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress over time as a way of comparing the state to the other 49 plus DC. The NAEP tests reading and math in Grades 4 and 8. Upward bars are above average scores; downward bars are below average.
You'll notice that Jeb! is always bragging on Florida's Grade 4 Reading scores. What he rarely mentions, however, is how his state does on Grade 8 tests, or on math tests. This graph makes clear why: Florida has been either at or below the (weighted) average on Grade 4 math and on Grade 8 reading and math for the last two administrations of the test. Yes, there was a bit of a bump on Grade 4 math in the 2000s, but the scores came back to Earth.
Does this look like a miracle to you?
Normally, I think any politician who gets up in front of people and brags on how his policies turned around his state's schools practically overnight is being ridiculous. There are just too many factors other than policy changes involved in affecting test scores: economic changes, demographic changes, cohort effects of other sorts, measurement - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/08/jebs-florida-education-meh-racle.html#sthash.xy2Am12c.dpuf
