I’ll be on Bill Bennett’s radio show tomorrow talking about the book and about a recent McKinsey study on the achievement gap in schools. The whole study is fascinating, and provides solid evidence that America’s schools are in need of some creative destruction (something Rick Hess has been writing a lot about).
One thing in the paper jumped out at me: how much better Texas does than California in educating students. Both states have similar demographics (although California has many more Asians). But California has what should be significant advantages—it is much richer ($42,102 per capita GDP to $37,073) and it spends 12 percent more on educating each student than Texas.
Despite this, Texas kids are one to two years of learning ahead of California kids of the same age. And blacks, whites, and Hispanics all do better in school in Texas than they do in California.
Ryan Streeter’s recent post on America as Texas vs. California was one of the most widely emailed and discussed at the Enterprise Blog. As the McKinsey paper makes clear, there’s even more to this story.