Political junkies in Nova Scotia tend to keep an eye on elections in adjacent provinces, but not so much in adjacent US states. The Atlantic's James Fallows points to an interesting race for governor of Maine, where independent candidate (and Fallows friend) Eliot Cutler seemed to be coming on strong last week, rising in the polls and winning an avalanche of major newspaper endorsements. As Fallows points out, victory for an independent is not so far-fetched in the Pine Tree State, where two of the last five governors won election as independents. Viewed from a region devoid of political leadership, Cutler...

28 October, 2010

How much does class size affect performance on standardized tests? The charts displayed below plot US state-level student-teacher ratios against against the results for three parts of the SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) used in US college admissions. .. .. .. These tables, from the wonderful FlowingData website, obviously use US data, but the results may have implications here. States with higher SAT scores are shown in green, and generally have lower student-teacher ratios. The ratio is not perfect, however. Utah has the largest classes in the US, but maintains better-than-average test scores. Maine has the smallest classes in the...

10 November, 2009