Hmmm If you live in SC then your children will be dumber (as reflected by SAT scores) than the national norm. And the more educated you are (in terms of diplomas) the dumber they are, relatively speaking. Is it the water?
Maybe its a combination of a culture where academic performance is not important and below norms educational systems that most of SC's children grow up in. It could be that the average SC degree of the parent is not from as competitive a school as the national average, but I believe that the home, peer, and school environment is a larger factor.
Of course the statement itself paints with a broad brush. There are several school districts in the state where the average child's score would rank higher than the national average. Our problem is that there are not very many of these examples in our state.
Could it be that nationally, children of college grads (and higher) are more likely to attend private schools or public schools where the parents are more likely also to have higher degrees. Peers matter at SAT time.
I'd be really careful how you interpret these numbers. Rule one on statistics is that the spread is more important than the value. That is, to say that the graduate school scores are bad, you have to know what the variance (std. deviation) is.
Secondly, we don't know how they got these numbers. Are these GRE scores at the beginning or end of grad school or is this volunteers taking test later in life.
To truly compare our schools we would need to see even more disaggregated data. Our relatively large black population will tend to skew the numbers, given that children of college educated blacks tend to do only as well as the children of high school educated whites.
The college board does show that our white students score lower than the national average for white students, but I suspect that we have don't have as many college educated whites as the national norm.
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I'd be curious to see the parents' SAT scores relative to the nation's as well.
I'm sure it's a long-term, systemic problem.
Another question I had is I wonder if the quality of a BS or a MS in SC is the same as other parts of the country.
Hmmm If you live in SC then your children will be dumber (as reflected by SAT scores) than the national norm. And the more educated you are (in terms of diplomas) the dumber they are, relatively speaking. Is it the water?
Maybe its a combination of a culture where academic performance is not important and below norms educational systems that most of SC's children grow up in. It could be that the average SC degree of the parent is not from as competitive a school as the national average, but I believe that the home, peer, and school environment is a larger factor.
Of course the statement itself paints with a broad brush. There are several school districts in the state where the average child's score would rank higher than the national average. Our problem is that there are not very many of these examples in our state.
Could it be that nationally, children of college grads (and higher) are more likely to attend private schools or public schools where the parents are more likely also to have higher degrees. Peers matter at SAT time.
I'd be really careful how you interpret these numbers. Rule one on statistics is that the spread is more important than the value. That is, to say that the graduate school scores are bad, you have to know what the variance (std. deviation) is.
Secondly, we don't know how they got these numbers. Are these GRE scores at the beginning or end of grad school or is this volunteers taking test later in life.
To truly compare our schools we would need to see even more disaggregated data. Our relatively large black population will tend to skew the numbers, given that children of college educated blacks tend to do only as well as the children of high school educated whites.
The college board does show that our white students score lower than the national average for white students, but I suspect that we have don't have as many college educated whites as the national norm.
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