Hillary Clinton may want to close every public school in America, according to math
This post has been updated.
During an event in Iowa on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton offered a suggestion to improve the nation's schools. "I wouldn't keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better-than-average job," she said. "If a school's not doing a good job, then that may not be good for the kids."
Now this sounds great, except for one downside: It would, taken to its logical conclusion, mean shutting down every school in the country.So let's say that there are 16 schools in the United States, which is probably a low estimate. We'll use this little school icon (made by Vectors Market) to represent each of those schools. Here:
Alright. Now let's assume that each school is evaluated on a scale from 1 to 100 each year. This isn't exactly how it works, but go with it for the sake of the example. Here are random scores for those 16 schools.
The average of those scores is 58.4. Per Clinton, any school that is not above that average has to get closed. So: Bye, schools!
Now, let's just assume that the schools get the same scores the next year. The new average is 73.9. And: Bye, more schools!
The key point here — the reason that it doesn't matter if we change the schools' scores or not, is this: About half of the schools in the United States will always be at or below average. That's how an average works! (If we used median scores,we’d get a cleaner half-and-half split.)
Continuing on. The new average is 88: Bye school!
The average is now 93. Bye school! Your 91 was sensational a few years ago; now it's in the bottom 50th percentile!
Clinton also stipulated thatHillary Clinton may want to close every public school in America, according to math - The Washington Post: