DT> While there are public school systems in the United States struggling 
DT> to
DT> provide a quality education for all children, there are many more who 
DT> are doing as good a job educating their children as the countries DT> to 
DT> which we like to compare ourselves. In "Comparing Apples to Apples: 
DT> What
DT> International Studies Tell Us," (1996) a key finding is sited. The 
DT> article states that "8th grade proficiency scores in Iowa, North 
DT> Dakota,
DT> and Minnesota were the same as those in the top-performing countries 
    These three states are _very_ unrepresentative of America.
    All three are almost all-white, with very few 
English-as-a-second-language kids.
    These states have disproportionately very few "hard to educate" kids 
compared to the rest of America.
    And you call this study "research"?  
DT> lowest-
DT> performing states--Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi--was 
DT> about the same as in the lowest-performing country, Jordan." So to 
DT> make 
DT> a blanket statement that American Public education is not doing its 
DT> job 
DT> is unfair. Some states are doing a very good job. To lump all states 
DT> together and brand them all failures is not fair or accurate.
    Statistically, more kids live in heavily-urbanized states plagued by 
big-city problems than live in states like the three nearly-all-white ones 
you mentioned.
DT> To what can we attribute the difference? Why are some states doing 
DT> well 
DT> and others not so well? Bracey ( May 1995) lays the blame on social 
DT> factors. "...social factors, not instruction or curriculum, account 
DT> for 
DT> most of the variation between states, according to research... Four
DT> factors--parental education, family structure, poverty rates, and 
DT> community type--can predict a state's ranking in NAEP scores 
    True.
    Which means that kids in many districts are effectively in schools like 
Jordan's, a country with a high poverty rate and many refugees.
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