Best Life magazine rated Clarksville, Tennessee the absolute worst on their “10 Worst Places to Raise a Family” list. Best Life also contains a feature on Jason Bateman and a rather in-depth look at olive oil.
One must always consider the source, you know.
Completely bonkers. Clarksville is a great little town. I will wager $500 that no one at that magazine involved with that article has ever even been to Clarskville.
The only reason they give is they only spend $6729 per student on education? Plenty of places spend less, but it doesn’t matter anyway because there is at best a weak and inconsistent correlation between school spending and student achievement. Many of the school districts nationally that spend the most have among the worst outcomes.
Clarksville’s take on the matter: http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080521/NEWS01/805210331
“Shelton said the school system actually spent $7,494 per student during the 2007-08 school year.
She also noted that in 2007, the local school system had the highest improvement in graduation rate in the state, in addition to every school in the district this year meeting the yearly goals established by No Child Left Behind.”
As an example, Sausalito spends $22,000 per student and pays teachers an average of $71,000, but “25 percent of Sausalito sixth-grade students are proficient or advanced in English and 13 percent are proficient or advanced in mathematics. Out of 1,025 districts in California, Sausalito is ranked 724th, which is at the 29.4th percentile”:
http://www.marinij.com/marinvoice/ci_4040709
How does this work? Well it turns out that paying a lot of money doesn’t have anything to do with creating good teaching practices: “Decades of a different curriculum in every classroom, ineffective and unevaluated teaching practices and teacher training, overemphasis on student self-esteem and low academic expectations created an academic deficit that has been hard to repair.”
In fact it might just encourage a lot of trendy gee whiz methods that are ineffective: “Sausalito has a long history of using Progressive methods of project-based learning and student self-discovery in mathematics and other subjects. Teaching in the district’s regular schools and, in particular, in its charter school is heavily influenced by ineffective Progressive methods.”