This just in: RICH KIDS DO BETTER IN PUBLIC EDUCATION!

…if Forbes is The Capitalist Tool™ maybe all the socioeconomically deprived children (tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" – ie: The Usual Suspects) are being tooled?
Taxes: Best And Worst School Districts For The Buck	California by the Numbers: Marin children, not surprisingly, fare the best
by Christina Settimi – from Forbes July 7th, 2007 — More spending doesn’t necessarily buy you better schools. With property taxes rising across the country, we took a look at per-pupil spending in public schools and weighed it against student performance--college entrance exam scores (SAT or ACT, depending on which is more common in the state), exam participation rates and graduation rates. Winners in this rating system are counties whose schools deliver high performance at low cost. The losers spend a lot of money and have little to show for it. Marin County, Calif., provides the best bang for the buck. In 2004 Marin spent an average of $9,356 ($6,579 adjusted for the cost of living relative to other metro areas in the U.S.) per pupil, among the lowest education expenditures in the country. But in return Marin delivered results above the national average: 96.8% of its seniors graduated, and 60.4% of them took the SAT college entrance exam and scored a mean 1133 (out of 1600). The others in the top five are Collin, Texas; Hamilton, Ind.; Norfolk, Mass.; and Montgomery, Md. In Pictures: Best And Worst School Districts For The Buck On the opposite end of the spectrum, Alexandria City, Va., which sits just six miles outside of our nation’s capital, spent $13,730 ($11,404 adjusted) per pupil, but its high schools registered only a 73% graduation rate, with 65.0% of the seniors participating in the SAT for a mean score of 963. According to John Porter, assistant superintendent, Administrative Services and Public Relations for the Alexandria City Public Schools, their graduation rate is reflective of a large number of foreign-born students who may take longer than the traditional four years to graduate. He also noted that their performance measures are rising, along with their expenditures. Per-pupil spending in Alexandria City is now over $18,000. Others on the bottom of the list include Glynn, Ga.; Washington, D.C.; Ulster, N.Y.; and Beaufort, S.C. Using research provided by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., Forbes began with a list of the 775 counties in the country with populations greater than 65,000 that had the highest average property taxes. From this list we isolated the 97 counties where more than 50% of per-pupil spending contributions comes from property taxes. (Click Here For Full Rankings)	by Dan Walters – Sacramento Bee/Capitol Alert Friday, June 22, 2007 — Here's a big surprise: children in Marin County, the state's wealthiest with a median family income well above $100,000, fare the best in terms of poverty, education, health care and other measures of kids' well-being. Equally predictable: Children in rural counties where median family incomes are around $30,000 fare the worst. The county-by-county rankings are contained in a new report from Oakland-based Children Now, the latest in a series of studies and reports from the organization which campaigns for improving education, health care and other services to children. Marin has the state's lowest level of children in low-income families, just 16 percent, while the statewide average is 43 percent and remote Siskiyou County, on the state's northern border, has the highest rate of 65 percent. Siskiyou, not surprisingly, is tied for the state's lowest level of median income at $30,356, according to Children Now calculations. On every other measure, Marin ranks at or near the top, such as in the percentage of young children enrolled in preschool or nursery school; it's 74 percent while Tulare brings up the rear at 23 percent. Marin, at 98 percent, plays second fiddle to San Francisco (100 percent) in the proportion of its children with health insurance, but the statewide average is 93 percent, thanks to "Healthy Families" and other government programs that provide health care to children, and even the lowest-ranked county, Shasta, has 83 percent of its children with health insurance of some kind. Children Now's latest study on children's well-being is available here.

(Forbes story continues:)

Since it costs more to educate a student in New York than Alabama, we adjusted expenditures for each metropolitan area based on Economy.com’s national cost of living average. We then chose to compare spending to the only performance measures that can be used to compare students equally across the country. With a nod toward recognizing the importance of education, performance was weighted twice against cost. Performance and cost numbers are county averages; individual school districts within a county can vary greatly.

Just getting the raw data is no small task; in many counties you have to call dozens of high schools one at a time to find out how many kids drop out, how many take the SATs and how they do on the exams. Since no standard method to calculate a graduation rate is enforced nationally, and the college entrance exam boards will only release data below a state level directly to the schools, not the public, we were left to trust county, district and school officials to honestly and accurately report their results.

During this process it was interesting to hear about the amount of effort and the number of creative ways that schools take to report the best possible results. For instance, high school guidance counselors can encourage poor-performing students to take the ACT exam over the SAT exam, so that their SAT score remains high. Graduation rates can be calculated based on the number of seniors still enrolled in school on the date of graduation, compared with looking at a cohort that began freshman year four years earlier or even looking at the number of seniors enrolled at the beginning of the year. If only as much effort went into improving performance as it did into fixing performance measures.

The caveats to our methodology notwithstanding, our study shows that there are big differences in the quality of education relative to spending among counties and is further proof that money is not the only--or perhaps even the most important--factor when it comes to the quality of education.

...ya think it would make any difference if one added three columns to the chart below?

Average Household Income | % of students on Free and Reduced Lunch | % of English Language Learners

-smf

Rank	County	State	Per Pupil Spending 1	College Entrance Exam Score2,3	College Entrance Exam Participation Rate3	Graduation Rate3
1	Marin	CA	$6,579	1,133	60.40%	96.80%
2	Collin	TX	$7,048	1,103	69.40%	92.20%
3	Hamilton	IN	$8,897	1,075	76.00%	95.00%
4	Norfolk	MA	$8,845	1,090	87.80%	89.20%
5	Montgomery	MD	$8,824	1,101	76.50%	91.40%
6	Fairfield	CT	$8,376	1,051	82.70%	92.00%
7	Howard	MD	$9,488	1,113	72.00%	93.80%
8	Monmouth	NJ	$10,081	1,059	83.30%	98.90%
9	Williamson	TX	$7,163	1,066	72.40%	88.80%
10	Fort Bend	TX	$6,906	1,034	73.10%	90.90%
11	Morris	NJ	$10,642	1,092	85.30%	98.40%
11	Loudoun	VA	$8,223	1,073	78.00%	87.00%
13	Hunterdon	NJ	$11,198	1,104	91.00%	97.50%
14	Somerset	NJ	$10,084	1,112	87.20%	88.30%
15	Denton	TX	$7,039	1,081	62.20%	89.70%
16	Ozaukee	WI	$9,959	24	72.20%	96.80%
17	Johnson	KS	$7,756	23	66.20%	95.50%
17	Santa Clara	CA	$5,500	1,098	49.70%	88.40%
19	Chester	PA	$11,314	1,075	79.60%	95.90%
20	Bergen	NJ	$11,712	1,072	87.50%	99.00%
21	Frederick	MD	$6,686	1,052	55.00%	95.00%
21	San Mateo	CA	$5,916	1,062	46.50%	92.60%
23	Middlesex	MA	$9,485	1,074	82.10%	87.50%
24	Albemarle	VA	$8,497	1,098	74.00%	84.00%
25	Sussex	NJ	$9,932	1,039	73.60%	97.70%
26	Kendall	IL	$7,826	19.8	97.70%	92.70%
27	Lake	IL	$8,985	22	94.60%	94.10%
28	Fairfax	VA	$8,438	1,114	70.50%	84.00%
28	Napa	CA	$6,328	1,055	31.70%	94.60%
30	McHenry	IL	$7,980	21.2	93.90%	92.00%
31	Nassau	NY	$11,711	1,073	86.00%	90.20%
32	Will	IL	$7,520	20	94.10%	91.10%
33	Martin	FL	$6,420	1,055	65.00%	84.90%
34	Middlesex	NJ	$10,143	1,030	75.30%	97.40%
35	Montgomery	PA	$11,758	1,068	74.00%	94.80%
36	Kane	IL	$7,665	20	95.10%	88.80%
37	Carroll	MD	$7,833	1,046	62.00%	93.80%
38	Galveston	TX	$6,756	1,048	68.20%	84.60%
38	Travis	TX	$7,795	1,054	78.20%	81.30%
40	Washington	RI	$10,648	1,062	67.70%	93.30%
41	Geauga	OH	$9,503	22	73.40%	96.50%
41	Montgomery	TX	$6,685	1,051	62.60%	85.90%
43	Waukesha	WI	$10,013	23	67.20%	95.60%
44	Rockland	NY	$13,956	1,071	86.80%	87.40%
45	Bucks	PA	$11,158	1,054	65.80%	94.60%
46	Westchester	NY	$14,352	1,084	81.50%	84.90%
47	McLean	IL	$9,508	21.3	91.20%	92.00%
48	Hanover	VA	$6,979	1,025	67.00%	86.00%
49	Chesterfield	VA	$6,977	1,030	69.00%	84.00%
50	Hartford	CT	$10,347	1,022	76.80%	90.40%
51	Calvert	MD	$7,166	1,050	57.00%	90.00%
52	Comal	TX	$6,938	1,015	65.60%	87.10%
53	Randall	TX	$6,644	1,046	33.70%	89.00%
54	Barnstable	MA	$8,896	1,038	77.20%	83.10%
55	Sarasota	FL	$6,822	1,057	60.90%	81.70%
56	Cumberland	ME	$9,625	1,050	65.60%	88.70%
57	Monroe	FL	$6,072	973	76.80%	76.70%
58	Brazos	TX	$7,968	1,091	54.80%	82.40%
59	Putnam	NY	$12,616	1,050	72.30%	88.40%
60	Newport	RI	$9,725	1,021	65.10%	91.40%
60	Knox	TN	$7,048	22	85.00%	75.80%
62	Brazoria	TX	$6,830	1,033	62.10%	82.40%
63	Dane	WI	$10,576	23.9	63.10%	87.80%
64	Arlington	VA	$11,855	1,085	72.00%	81.00%
65	Delaware	OH	$10,256	22.4	64.20%	95.50%
65	Hays	TX	$7,342	1,017	62.20%	86.60%
67	Indian River	FL	$6,455	1,018	45.00%	85.30%
68	Ocean	NJ	$8,920	999	69.30%	86.90%
69	Tarrant	TX	$6,891	1,018	59.50%	85.20%
69	Palm Beach	FL	$5,995	1,005	58.50%	69.00%
71	Cass	ND	$8,641	22	70.60%	85.00%
71	St. Johns	FL	$7,034	1,043	63.00%	76.80%
73	Collier	FL	$6,126	1,018	49.00%	74.30%
74	Cook	IL	$9,238	18.8	92.80%	83.10%
75	Henrico	VA	$6,990	1,033	57.30%	82.00%
75	Anne Arundel	MD	$8,217	1,056	51.00%	83.00%
77	Lancaster	NE	$9,106	22.6	76% 5	81.20%
77	Monroe	PA	$7,137	954	56.00%	90.00%
78	Suffolk	NY	$10,423	940	82.60%	87.00%
79	Delaware	PA	$10,959	1,003	65.10%	91.40%
80	York	ME	$8,616	999	58.50%	88.50%
81	Charlotte	FL	$6,458	996	44.40%	76.70%
82	Lee	FL	$6,213	965	43.80%	69.40%
82	Minnehaha	SD	$7,139	22.7	61.70%	81.80%
84	Dallas	TX	$6,883	971	55.80%	81.30%
85	Harris	TX	$7,143	981	60.60%	80.10%
86	Kent	RI	$10,012	1,032	57.50%	88.00%
86	Lake	OH	$10,358	21	64.00%	92.90%
88	Jefferson	TX	$7,790	926	66.70%	82.40%
89	Baltimore	MD	$8,599	1,025	55.20%	84.80%
91	Walworth	WI	$10,261	22.2	56.40%	91.30%
92	Davidson	TN	$8,686	19.3	67.00%	61.90%
93	Beaufort	SC	$9,278	971	64.00%	63.80%
94	Ulster	NY	$12,482	1,032	62.10%	83.60%
95	District of Columbia		$10,473	968	79.00%	73.00%
96	Glynn	GA	$9,126	975 4	56.50%	57.00%
97	Alexandria City	VA	$11,404	963	65.00%	73.00%

¹Based on Fiscal Year 2004, adjusted for the cost of living in the county's associated Metropolitan Statisical Area
²Mean score of exam more common in the state (SAT score out of 1600, ACT of of 36)
³For the high school class of 2005
⁴Combines SAT and ACT (converted to SAT scale) results
⁵State average
Sources: Tax Foundation, Economy.com, counties, school district officials, high school administrators, SchoolMatters