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Friday, March 2, 2012

(Real) Graph vs (Fake) Graph Friday « School Finance 101

(Real) Graph vs (Fake) Graph Friday « School Finance 101:

(Real) Graph vs (Fake) Graph Friday

This post provides a quick follow up to yesterday’s post (late last night) when I critiqued a questionable graph from an NJDOE presentation here: State of NJ Schools presentation 2-29-2012

It turns out that the slide presentation had many comparable graphs that deserve at least some attention. First, there’s this graph which attempts to argue that early reading proficiency is a statewide issue, and not just a problem of low income urban neighborhoods:

Rather impressive eh? Certainly gives the impression that early reading deficits are concentrated not in the poorest districts but in the least poor ones.

Why would someone make such an argument? Well, one reason would be if this argument was being coupled with arguments to redistribute funding to those less poor district to help them out – to argue that educational