I-MAG STS Corporation
While average scores by school are of moderate interest, what all
parents and students really need and should demand is not just the
arrogance of an average - asserting that one number represents
dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of individuals, but
rather a distribution of scores by teacher. That means one could look
up a chart of the incoming scores by student for a teacher and see
what outgoing scores a year later have been. After all, if a student
comes in as 578 out of 800, and after a year of work by the student,
parents and teacher, is still a 578 this may not be the best teacher for
this student. Perhaps this teacher is gangbusters for really top
students or is extraordinarily capable with students with dyslexia. But
he or she is probably not the best match for this student.
So more money to hire more teachers or better teachers, right?
Not quite.
If we correlate the county money spent with average county math
SAT we get a rating of -.66821. That's not entirely accurate as
Alpine did not report any scores. If we drop out Alpine's zero we get a
correlation of -0.17178. That means there is barely any statistical
relationship between funding per pupil and achivement.