Breaking! Romney made accurate statement!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

Bay State students may be number one: On the Washington Post’s web site, Ruth Marcus is batting Romney around for his various misstatements last night.

Obama didn’t seem to care. Neither did potted plant Lehrer. With Marcus setting a good example, let’s hope more journalists do.

That said, we have breaking news about last night’s debate! Repeatedly, Romney made a basically accurate statement about Massachusetts schools!

He kept saying the schools were number one, bathing in their reflected glow. We can’t tell you what role Romney played. But Bay State kids attained these rankings on last year’s NAEP tests:
Massachusetts students, ranking among the fifty states, 2011 NAEP:
Grade 4 math:

White students: 1
Black students: 2
Hispanic students: 7

Grade 8 math:
White students: 1
Black students: 3
Hispanic students: 16

Grade 4 reading:
White students: 1
Black students: 3
Hispanic students: 7

Grade 8 reading:
White students: 3
Black students: 7
Hispanic students: 39
We haven’t adjusted for low-income status. But Bay State students still rank very high after you do that. Bay State schools scored very high, except among eighth-grade Hispanic students.

P.S. Texas kids score very high too. Don’t tell the high Lady Collins!

8 comments:

  1. The gold standard of fact-checking: "basically accurate."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The gold standard of...

      ...yawn...

      Delete
    2. Super-incisive, Bob.

      Delete
  2. Romney played no significant role in Massachusett's public education success. Education reform was begun in 1993 in Massachusetts and involved many different parts including a total change in how education is finded as well as a serious testing program (MCAS) that has been run and monitored very carefully to avoid the cheating so common elsewhere as well as major commitments to teacher improvement and development, just to name a few changes that were started then. Ed. Reform was a bill sponsored by Democrats and signed into law by Republican Governor Weld. It did not happen overnight.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. As a Mass. resident during Romney's term as governor, it has been driving me around the bend that he keeps taking credit for Mass. schools when he had essentially nothing to do with it.

      Delete
  3. Marcus also batted around Al Gore:

    "If I were an Obama advisor, I would worry about the danger of Obama overcompensating in the second debate, much like Al Gore did by invading George W. Bush's space."

    Marcus quoted Karl Rove verbatim on that one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Actually, the second debate was the table "foreign policy" debate when Gore overcompensated for the first debate "sighing" by pretty much agreeing with everything Dubya said.

    Then in the third debate, the "town hall" debate, he overcompensated for his second debate niceness by "invading Dubya's space."

    ReplyDelete