Here is one groups rating. My goal was to look at the top districts, after hearing they didn’t have charters depleting them of resources, and follow that line to see if it was true or not.

If you click you see the top 100 schools. That includes all public and private schools. (These types of lists are compiled for real estate selling reasons…)

First a simple count by state…

MA 61 of the top 100 schools
CA 10
MN 8
LA 7
TN 4
MI 3
others 7

What the heck is going on in Massachusetts?

Next, top 100 worst schools.

CA 18 of the 100 worst
WI 15
OK 8
OH 7
PA 7
AK 5
IN 5
others 33

All over the place and none from Massachusetts.

States with highest percentages of charters

DC 54.69%
FL 16.37%
HI 13.19%
CO 11.75%
CA 11.53%
MN 11.38%
NM 10.57%
DE 10.40%
WI 10.20%
UT 10.08%

States with zero charters

Alabama
Kentucky
Maine
Montana
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Vermont
Washington
West Virginia

The average ranking of all the charter school states was 23.
The average ranking of all non charter school states was 27.

Overall the outcome was inconclusive. It appears other factors involve the quality of education, at least from this assessment. The highs and lows of the rankings of the top charter states ranged from 2 to 37. The highs and lows of those states with zero charter schools ranged from 10 to 49.

So another idea would be to cross reference the percentage of charter schools in those states listed as the top ten in teaching science and math. Ranked below in order 1-10.
MA 3.3%
MN 11.38%
NJ 3.08%
NH 3.04%
NY 3.49%
VA 0.10%
MD 3.44%
CT 1.08%
IN 2.76%
ME 0.00%

Delaware is bucking the trend with its 10.40%. It has the 7th highest saturation of charter students in America. Also one should note that three of our neighbors, NJ, MD, and VA are ranked in the top ten. Delaware as you can see is at 25. From the above, with the exception of MN, it appears that one must strive to keep the number of charters down around 3% to be in the top fifth.

So let us take the above states and list them in the same order, by how well they teach math and science, but include the rank and cost of how much they spend per pupil…

MA 9th $14,540
MN 18th $11,088
NJ 3rd $17,076
NH 11th $12,583
NY 2nd $17,746
VA 19th $10,928
MD 10th $13,737
CT 5th $15,353
IN 34th $ 9,254
ME 14th $12,183

(Delaware is ranked 15th out of spending per student with a total of $12,109.)

New York, New Jersey, and CT all outspend MA, but didn’t bump it out of its number one spot. MN, here the 2nd ranked state, spends less than Delaware. Indiana spends the 34th least among all states yet still manages to be included in the top ten.

So let us look at states by their per capita income, in this case ranked by their medium per capita income.

1 Maryland $70,004
2 Alaska $67,825
3 New Jersey $67,458
4 Connecticut $65,753
X Dist/Columbia $63,124
5 Massachusetts $62,859
6 New Hampshire $62,647
7 Virginia $61,882
8 Hawaii $61,821 $59,290
9 Delaware $58,814
10 California $57,287
11 Minnesota $56,954

Here we see some correlation. Of the top ten income states, 7 are in the top ten rankings. Notice Delaware, Hawaii, and California are not (DC is neither).

These four all have charters in excess of 10%! So it appears strictly from this comparison, that if you have high income then you should have high student scores, unless you have excessive charters in your state bo bring down your score.

Unions are often blamed either pro or con. Here are the 10 strongest teacher union states ranked in order.

HI
OR
MT
PA
RI
CA
NJ
IL
NY
WA

Of all these only two are in the top ten. New Jersey and New York. Delaware’s union strength is ranked 19th, between Wisconsin and Alabama. Virginia as expected is near the bottom at 47th. Indiana is 31st. Massachusetts is 21st, and Minnesota is 14th.

There appears to be little correlation between teacher’s union strength and rankings on math and science.

Perhaps it is related to blacks as white flight might lead one to believe… Below are ranked the states with the fewest blacks and those with the highest percentage of blacks.
States and percentage of black/population
Montana 0.67%
Vermont 0.87%
Idaho 0.95%
Maine 1.03%
North Dakota 1.08%
South Dakota 1.14%
New Hampshire 1.22%
Utah 1.27%
Wyoming 1.29%
Oregan 2.01%

Only one, New Hampshire is in the top ten. Now for states with the highest concentration of African-Americans.

MS
LA
GA
MD
SC
AL
NC
DE
VA
TN

In this case, 2 states with the highest African American populations, are in the top ten. MD and VA, both sharing the Delmarva peninsula as Delaware. Since these averages are within 1 of each other, this factor obviously makes no difference…

So what did Massachusetts do? The answer is everything different from Delaware. Massachusetts boosted education funding by more than 10 percent for each of the first six years – targeting the money largely to schools and districts with the highest needs. To date, the 1993 law has channeled $34.5 billion in “extra” state funding to school districts. On the opposite extreme Delaware has cut funding to all districts, choosing to spend it through the Department of Education. Recently one Delaware District saw $2.3 million taken away because the state wanted to spend it frivolously and the district refused.

Strategies to boost inner city achievement in Boston – the state’s largest district – have included double blocks of time for reading and math instruction.. Delaware has taken the opposite approach by jumbling up schedules with outside educational interests by so much that a student has no idea of what is up.

In the 2010-11 school year, 97 percent of Massachusetts teachers were licensed specifically in the area they taught, and all teachers are required to earn a master’s degree during their career. Delaware has taken the opposite approach. Employing very recent non educationally trained college graduates through Teach of America, giving them a 5 week learning summer vacation, then throwing them into the toughest inner city schools.

And instead of coddling charter schools as does Delaware by giving them undeserved funding taken from public schools, in Massachusetts the state reform law set up a rigorous approval process for charter schools, so tough that many of which boast strong academic achievement.

Bottom line, is that it appears that to succeed in education it takes many factors.. but the prime one is to fund the public schools and beat up charter schools to do better. Delaware does the opposite. It takes funding away from public schools and gives it to charters….

We are headed on the wrong path. We need to get off, and look around. HB 165 is too much, too fast, in exactly the opposite direction taken by Massachusetts, the number one state ranked in science and math…