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.
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.
>while even the Deep South, which has consistently been at the bottom, is going up
Well their PISA scores haven't been going up. In fact they've been going down. So if their education is getting better, it's not showing up in the ability of their students to answer questions that other students seem to be able to answer.
That's kind of what I meant by PISA removing "BS"-ability from the equation. For some reason, on American standardized tests, all our children do great. Then we take PISA with all the other kids in the world, and the truth comes out.
That's also why I think we should all just take Massachusetts' education curriculum and implement it across the nation. Because you talk about demographics, but even when you control for income and race, kids in Massachusetts just flat out do better than our kids. Even just taking all kids at the bottom of the rankings in Massachusetts, they are still doing better than kids at the median of the rankings of many, many other states. (And think about the demographics of kids at the bottom in Boston, Brockton, or Springfield. Come on, admit it man. I'll try to stay politically correct here and just state that those very likely aren't professors' kids at the bottom of the rankings in Massachusetts.)
Massachusetts is so far ahead of all of us that I think I'd be comfortable just saying that they seem to have gotten it right, and we should simply copy it. Because right now, the gap is just getting wider and wider with every round of PISA testing.
Could you link where you're getting the PISA scores from? I've seen references that PISA was not conducted in all 50 states, at least recently. Also, I can't get a breakdown of "US States and Territories" for 2022 on the PISA website at https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/idepisa/report.aspx
There are other states without the regulations that these businesses apparently find offensive. Why can't the manufacturing be spun up in those states?
So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes.
> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.
Texas beats California in total value of manufacturing shipments only because because of its petroleum and coal products manufacturing. And California beats Texas in manufacturing employment.
None of which answers the question of why we can't manufacture things in other states? Things that California clearly doesn't want to manufacture.
Again, what is the reason New Mexico, or Utah, or Nebraska, or Tennessee cannot manufacture these things? And why is it a problem if they do so instead of California?
Big companies already handle manufacturing in other states. Often in states that have the worst education systems and quality of living. It is frequently done to reduce the cost of labor.
Manufacturing jobs are also some of the most unstable because big companies will shop around for tax breaks. Once they find a political sucker ... they build a new plant and close the old one which wrecks havoc on the local economy. PR teams are designed to mitigate negative feedback when this happens.
Smart politicians know this and will not concede to tax breaks for big companies, like Amazon.
Doesn't that just make California's case for them though?
I mean if these jobs are so bad, isn't it good that California is trying to not have them in its own municipalities? The way you laid it out, shouldn't everyone be trying not to have those jobs?
Quality of a job matters. So does proper regulation so the job is not harmful to the worker or community or environment. Those others state politicians that welcome those jobs without proper regulation are willing to ignore the health and well-being of their neighbors.
Manufacturing jobs are not bad. The environment and de-regulation makes them bad.
To me a job must have a living wage tied to it and it must be in an environment that doesn't poison the employee, community, and nature.
Others have low standards like calling USA McDonald's a job when they don't even pay enough to live off of. EU McDonald's is forced to pay a living wage because of proper regulations.
> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.
California has the highest manufacturing employment and most manufacturing companies of any state, the second highest (behind only Texas) dollar value of manufacturing output.
It is just below the national average in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but its also the fifth highest state in GDP/capita; leaving it still above average in manufacturing GDP/capita.
You could also say that this is what the people have wanted for decades.
Remember the PATRIOT Act? Voted in by a vote of 99 to 1 in the senate. (And the 1 who voted against it? Yeah, we got rid of him for a more "law and order" type guy.)
What we're seeing is just the people getting more of what they're demanding. You get the government you deserve. And you deserve to get that government good and hard as often as possible.
Specific programs and laws be temporary - the PATRIOT act is mostly expired now - but the status quo established is meant to be permanent. It's called "shock doctrine" for a reason[0]. The current administration is trying the same thing by presenting "Chinese interference" and "illegal immigration" as being equally existential threats as 9/11.
And some of the uglier implementations may be repealed, ICE may be "reformed," there may be "hearings" and "committees" and that may give the illusion of "returning to normal" but we will never go back to the reality of power before Trump any more than we can go back to the reality of power before 9/11. Absent revolution and civil war, it's simply impossible.
But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy
This is kind of disingenuous.
I mean, not everything used in California, needs to be manufactured in California. Why not manufacture it in New Mexico? Or Arkansas for that matter?
What you're implying, is that Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maine, Florida, etc, etc, etc, should all build out the manufacturing base to manufacture things that are used in those states. That's not really how a healthy economy should work.
I guess what I'm pointing out is that, we don't need to manufacture smartphones in South Dakota. It's perfectly acceptable to manufacture them in, say, New Jersey, and then ship them to South Dakota. Similarly, we don't need to manufacture everything in California.
Sure. Everything's built overseas. We all already know that.
Why can't things be be built here, in a state other than California?
What is the fixation with California? Tennessee or Nebraska would love to build smart phones, or even just the chips for smart phones. What is the reasoning for not building these things in other states?
The Chinese are clearly doing some "rebalancing" lately. Some would even say that "rebalancing" is not a strong enough word. "De-linking" is a word a lot of those people are more comfortable with using to describe what we're seeing.
You can't really have a unipolar power if that power simply "takes all their marbles and goes home" so to speak.
I think we need to really do some strategic planning around scenarios where China or Europe simply withdraws from the rest of the world. Or decides they only need subsaharan Africa for instance.
Or, the nightmare scenario; where China, Europe, and subsaharan Africa actually figure out that together they don't really need anything from the rest of us.
I think we should be careful of writing off this sea change as simple professional influence campaigns. That kind of thinking is just what got Trump to the Whitehouse, and is currently getting the immigrants rounded up.
Things that didn't seem likely to have broad support previously, now are seen as acceptable. In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants. No one could envision uploading an ID card to use ICQ. No one could envision the concept of DE-naturalization or getting rid of birthright citizenship.
Today, in the US for instance, there are entire new generations of people alive. And many, many people who were alive in the 90's are gone. Well these new people very much can envision these things. And they seem to have stocked the Supreme Court to make all these kinds of things a reality.
All because the rest of us keep dismissing all of this as just harmless extreme positions that no one in society really supports. We have to start fighting things like this with more than, "It's not real."
You don’t think the current admin uses influence campaigns? They are called “influence” campaigns for a reason; they are intended to shape both beliefs and behaviors.
Things that have broad support now may have that support primarily because of longstanding influence campaigns.
Both the widespread growth in smoking, and its later drop in popularity, are often credited to determined influence campaigns. You are not immune to propaganda!
And Clinton only deported 2 million across his entire 8 years in office. With a laser focus on convicted criminals as part of a war on drugs. (Now the efficacy of the old "War on Drugs" can be argued, but the numbers can't. We have the records.)
I think you're conflating the number of "returns", defined in the 90's as people who were not allowed to enter at the border; and "deportations", defined in the 90's as people who were in the US, and then we put on a plane back out of the US. IE - "Returns" were people who showed up at the border, sea port, airport or border checkpoint; asked to get in, and we said no. Basically, the nice people.
What you mean is that Clinton simply didn't let anyone into the country. This is true. (Again, we have the records. Clinton refused entry to the US more than any president in US history.) He didn't, however, round up immigrants living in the US on this scale and deport them like we're seeing today. People would never have allowed for that.
To put numbers on it, Trump is on year 5, and has already processed more formal removal orders than Clinton did by year 8. Not only that, voluntary removals were near non-existent under Clinton in the 90's. Today, for just this year alone, they sit at around 1.5 million.
Here is a more extended quote from Jefferson on the same subject:
“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts and sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers.
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, etc., etc.; but no details can be relied on.
I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”
I tried to implement a minimal server just to realize that there is still no way to do so in java 21... I stand corrected I guess it was recently added: https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/25/docs/api/jdk.https..., but it's a sun package instead of standard RT - but probably because it is still early.
For example, Northwestern University (in the middle of downtown Chicago) got itself reclassified as a rural hospital in order to participate in the program.
This is also a bit misleading though right? Northwestern was obliged to put 11 other hospitals and something on the order of like 150 to 200 clinic/other locations on its books largely for the purposes of access. So that rural communities across northern Illinois can also have the same access as people in Chicago.
The fact is, they are a rural healthcare system. Because the options that were in those locations previously were unable to make a long term go of it.
I was being a bit glib/imprecise before, but I'm specifically talking about the Northwestern Memorial campus downtown Chicago [0]. That location qualifies for 340B as a Rural Referral Center (RRC), and got itself reclassified by CMS/HRSA as rural to do so, despite being in the middle of downtown. RRCs need to meet a lower threshold of Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) adjustment percentage (8% vs the usual 11.75%). Northwestern Memorial needs to be an RRC because it doesn't meet the higher DSH threshold.
AFAIK, the other hospitals/clinics under the Northwestern umbrella don't really factor into whether the downtown Northwestern Memorial campus qualifies for 340B (insofar as they all have their own CCNs and qualify independently). In this case, Northwestern Memorial qualifies because it a) got reclassified as rural b) became an RRC (likely based on its staff specialty mix) c) meets the RRC DSH threshold of >= 8%.
Northwestern Memorial does treat a lot of rural patients, so maybe it does deserve 340B. That said, it seems clear that it's not they type of struggling safety-net/rural hospital 340B was originally intended to subsidize.
AFAIK, the other hospitals/clinics under the Northwestern umbrella don't really factor into whether the downtown Northwestern Memorial campus qualifies for 340B
The money is shared at the system level. The referrals are to/from other hospitals/clinics in the system. Many of the other facilities in the system, exist because of Northwestern Memorial. This is what needs to be done to ensure access.
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.
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