[georgeecollins]

I think it could be better run for sure. We need to look at things other states seem to do well (Utah - homelessness, Texas - K12) and push to improve.

The problem for me is that when you go out in the rest of the country the dislike bordering on hate for California is really common. It is insane to me that you can send Marines to Los Angeles and almost no one cares. California is a such a huge chunk of the US economy, not just tech but agriculture, trade and yes even manufacturing.

The partisanship is poison for everyone and it holds back reform in California. We're all the same country.

[bilbo0s]

>Texas - K12

Uh..

I'd do Massachusetts K-12. Texas is pretty bad.

Massachusetts consistently ranks in the top 10 in the world on PISA. An exam which removes all the political "BS"-ability from the results and comparisons. It's just your students taking the same test as all the other students in the world, and the resultant scores being ranked.

Texas K-12 is horrible. Lived there from Katrina to a few years past Harvey. Our PISA scores were consistently horrible when we were ranked internationally.

Though, curiously enough, we were not "horrible" if you only compared us to the same test results in other US states. We were nowhere near Massachusetts. But we weren't Alabama/Florida/Mississippi either. Which means education in general in the US is pretty bad outside maybe the top 3 to 5 states by performance on the PISA exams.

[tmp10423288442]

Massachusetts is unusually good though, probably because of the high concentration of elite universities in Boston, which is also the capital of the state, which means politicians there take education most seriously - and don't forget the demographic effect of the number of professors and other highly-educated professionals.

Texas, California, and Florida are all fairly similar, with California doing somewhat worse than Texas and Florida. Unfortunately, the dedication of California to effective education is going down over time, while even the Deep South, which has consistently been at the bottom, is going up.

[M3L0NM4N]

Texas K-12 performance has decreased significantly in recent decades, largely due to massive poorly-educated Hispanic immigration.