DT> BM> Oh and for what it's worth.. the upper midwest, particularly
DT> BM> Minnesota, has a high number of immigrants from SE Asia, the 
DT> former
DT> BM> Soviet Union and a number of Balkan countries...all those 
DT> children
DT> BM>of  course speak flawless English when they arrive.  Those schools
DT> BM>are  doing something very right...
DT> 
DT> Yes they are and I wish I could find something written that tells us 
DT> what it is.  If you run across anything, send it my way.
    What the upper Midwestern schools are "doing very right" is being lucky 
enough to have few "hard-to-educate" kids enter their doors.
    These states have very few crack babies in most school districts.  They 
have few black residents, something that factors into high state average SAT 
scores when you consider that the average black SAT score is lower than the 
average white SAT score even in the same district.  They have few non-Cuban 
Hispanics, which means that a higher percent of kids graduate simply due to 
the high dropout rate of Hispanics compared to non-Hispanic whites, even in 
the same district.  Their students are disproportionately rural, meaning few 
are in urban youth gangs or into hard drugs.
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