The Obama administration's lone star mistake
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has trashed Texas schools, but Texas gets great bang for the buck.

Article Highlights

  • #Texas schools' average test scores are at the national average why is Secretary #Duncan labeling them substandard? #bullying

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  • They spend less than 3/4 of the nation on #education, yet #Texas test scores are higher than 3/4 #morebangforthebuck #efficient

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  • Across the #races , Texas graduates more high school #freshmen than the US average #secondsemestersenior

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The Obama administration made what was supposed to be a pre-emptive strike on Texas Governor Rick Perry, but which turned out to be, in baseball terms, a “swing … and a miss.” The administration unleashed Education Secretary Arne Duncan to attack Texas’s record on education, with Duncan saying he feels “very, very badly for the children.” When pressed to explain precisely what Texas has done wrong on education, Duncan came up a bit short on specifics. The Education Secretary’s arguments have generated a lot of useful discussion across the web, but I thought I would throw some rudimentary data analysis into the picture.

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About the Author

 

Andrew G.
Biggs
  • Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Prior to joining AEI he was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), where he oversaw SSA's policy research efforts and led the agency's participation in the Social Security Trustees working group. In 2005 he worked on Social Security reform at the National Economic Council and in 2001 was on the staff of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Andrew’s work at AEI focuses on Social Security reform, state and local government pensions, and comparisons of public and private sector compensation. His work has appeared in academic publications as well as outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, and he has testified before Congress on numerous occasions. He holds a Bachelors degree from the Queen's University of Belfast, Masters degrees from Cambridge University and the University of London and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.

  • Phone: 202-862-5841
    Email: andrew.biggs@aei.org
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    Name: Veronika Polakova
    Phone: 202-862-4880
    Email: veronika.polakova@aei.org

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