You get what you pay for? The Rittenhouse Review
comments on a
ranking (by MSNBC?) of
public high schools in the nation. We agree that the methodology is suspect, but we thought it might provide us with a crude way to rank state public school systems. So we made a table. In the first column is the state, and for fun, how it voted in 2000. Roughly speaking, Blue (Gore) states are high-tax, high-service states. The 2nd column is the number of "Top High Schools" each state had (out of a total of 800+). The 3rd column are the number of Electoral College votes each state will cast in 2004 - which is a rough proxy for population. Surprisingly, many states had nearly the same number of top high schools as Electoral Votes, but that was just a happy coincidence
Generally speaking, outstanding states (with # Top Schools >= 2 * Electoral Votes) were Blue. But there were some Red states as well (N. Carolina, Utah, Virginia). And keep an eye on Colorado, Florida, and Texas. They almost qualified. Sub-standard states (# schools < 1/3 Electoral Votes [min 6]) were often Red. Food for thought
Anyway, here is the table:
State &
how voted
in 2000
Red=Bush, Blue=Gore | Performance: | | better than expected: | | | | worse than expected: | | | 2004
Electoral
College
votes |
| Ala. | 4 | 9 |
| Ak. | 2 | 3 |
| Ariz. | 3 | 10 |
| Ark. | 3 | 6 |
| Calif | 163 | 55 |
| Colo. | 17 | 9 |
| Conn. | 14 | 7 |
| D.C. | 4 | 3 |
| Del. | 1 | 3 |
| Fla. | 50 | 27 |
| Ga. | 19 | 15 |
| Hawaii | 0 | 4 |
| Ida. | 2 | 4 |
| Ill. | 25 | 21 |
| Ind. | 1 | 11 |
| Iowa | 1 | 7 |
| Kan. | 5 | 6 |
| Ken. | 1 | 8 |
| Louis. | 0 | 9 |
| Me. | 1 | 4 |
| Md. | 41 | 12 |
| Mass | 17 | 10 |
| Mich. | 15 | 17 |
| Minn. | 14 | 10 |
| Miss. | 0 | 6 |
| Mo. | 6 | 11 |
| Mont. | 1 | 3 |
| Neb. | 0 | 5 |
| Nev. | 6 | 5 |
| N.H. | 0 | 4 |
| N.J. | 35 | 15 |
| N.M. | 1 | 5 |
| N.Y | 116 | 31 |
| N.C. | 39 | 15 |
| N.D. | 0 | 3 |
| Ohio | 16 | 20 |
| Okla. | 6 | 7 |
| Ore. | 5 | 7 |
| Pa. | 11 | 21 |
| R.I | 1 | 4 |
| S.C. | 12 | 8 |
| S.D. | 1 | 3 |
| Tenn. | 4 | 11 |
| Tex. | 50 | 34 |
| Utah | 14 | 5 |
| Vermont | 0 | 3 |
| Va | 61 | 13 |
| Wash. | 8 | 11 |
| W.Va. | 1 | 5 |
| Wis. | 10 | 10 |
| Wy. | 0 | 3 |
Excel spreadsheet of the data available
here (caution, some variable state names: NY, N.Y., Penn, Pa.)
posted by Quiddity at 6/16/2003 10:06:00 AM 
