Right Wing Nation

I was playing around with this new online database that shows graduation rates (thanks, Joanne!) and the first thing I did was search for the local school district (State College School District). I then, of course, checked Bloomington’s "city" school district (Monroe County Community School Corporation), expecting to see similar stats. They’re both college towns, with campuses roughly the same size (Penn State’s flagship campus is a little larger than Indiana University’s, but they’re comparable), they’re not quite the same size (Bloomington is larger), but close, not urban, certainly, and not really small towns. They both have the same kind of semi-rural, leave your doors unlocked feel. There are two high schools in the Monroe County Community School Corporation, Bloomington North and Bloomington South, and one in the State College School District, State College High School.

What I found is not what I had expected. But first, let’s compare graduation rates (these data are for 2002-2003) for the two states, just as a control:

There’s a difference of 6%, but it’s not vast, certainly not large enough to explain this:

Considering how similar the two communities are (above), how can we account for this discrepancy? My first impulse was to check other school districts in both Monroe County (Indiana) and Centre County (Pennsylvania), thinking perhaps if I did, the discrepancy would disappear. There is only one other school district in Monroe County, the Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation (yes, there really is such a place as Bean Blossom, Indiana) and several other school districts in Centre County, so I also got the data from a very small, very rural school district in Indiana, the Northeast Dubois County School Corporation:

I chose the Bellefonte Area School District because locals are fond of sneering at it (Bellefonte is the county seat, so there’s a certain amount of envy going on there), and it’s significantly smaller than the State College School District. I could have chosen any of the other districts in the county to get the same contrast (small, rural), but went with the closest, the Bald Eagle School District.

Clearly, contrasting Bloomington and State College with smaller, rural districts only partially accounts for the discrepancy. Richland-Bean Blossom has a higher graduation rate than Bloomington, but still lower than both of the Centre County districts. But if we add in school districts from large urban areas in each state (I chose the major school district from the two cities), things get even more bizarre:

Not only are the graduating rates significantly lower than even the Bloomington rates, but the IPS rate is far lower than I would have expected (what I would call shut them down, fire everybody, hire all new faculty and staff, change everything and start all over again low).

It seemed almost a waste of time to see if perhaps the level of education of the general populace could account for the difference, since both Bloomington and State College are college towns, but I did it anyway:

The difference in educational levels between the two is misleading, since in reality, the college town here is Happy Valley, of which State College Borough is only a part. Still, I doubt that even if we could somehow get the education levels of the Happy Valley populace (which we cannot, because Happy Valley is a conglomeration and no census data are taken), they would increase the numbers enough to account for the difference.

So population, does that account for it? It doesn’t seem like it does, from just looking at Bloomington and State College, but when we take into account all the other data:

If we run a Pearson correlation, we get the following:

Granted, I’m not working with much data, certainly not enough that I can draw any conclusions. Still, the r is -0.81442, and that’s a strong, negative correlation (r² is 0.6633, indicating that 66.33% of the variation in graduation rates is accounted for by variation in population), and it indicates that the larger the population, the lower the graduation rate. Somebody–not me–needs to analyze more data, and see if this holds true with a significantly larger sample.

But I think it’s interesting, especially all the nonsense we hear from the urban pinkie-up liberals about stupid rednecks who live in small towns or the country. And before somebody says it, yes, I know the data are cherry-picked, and yes, I know the data are not representative. I was just playing with the database. But that’s exactly why I say somebody should look into this further.

as Average Gay Joe leads the charge against sodium chloride!

Andrew Bolt:

Zimbabwe thought Sydney’s Earth Hour - turning off the lights for an hour to save the planet - was such a good idea, it’s turning off the power to the whole country. Every day.

Heh.

Oh no!

BOTTLED water, the world’s fastest growing beverage, carries a heavy environmental cost, adding plastic to landfills and putting pressure on natural springs, the author of a new US report said today.

“Bottled water is really expensive, in terms of environmental costs and economically,” said Ling Li, who wrote the report for the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute.

Bottled water is a scam, but this is about the best reason I’ve seen to buy it.

Papua police fight human sacrifice cult:

PORT MORESBY (Reuters) - Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported Wednesday.

The National newspaper said several people were killed and many injured in the fighting last week in the Finschhafen area of Morobe province, 350 km (220 miles) north of the capital, Port Moresby.

Black magic is widespread in Papua New Guinea, a jungle-clad, mountainous South Pacific island nation where some villages only encountered Western civilization in the 1930s. Women suspected of being witches are often hanged or burnt to death.

Police who flew to the area Sunday said they believed they were dealing with a cult movement involved in murders and human sacrifices to their gods, the newspaper said.

Morobe’s chief police inspector, Augustine Wampe, said suspicions of cult activity started in April when a child was kidnapped and police were attacked trying to rescue the child.

“It takes a whole day to walk from (the town of) Sialum to the village in the mountains, where the child was held. The four (police) were ambushed and attacked by the villagers,” he said.

“Gunfire was exchanged and one of the policemen was injured in the leg with an arrow. Another policeman fell over a cliff.”

Police reinforcements were attacked and forced to retreat. The villagers then went on a rampage killing one man and chopping up his body and burning houses, Wampe said.

Wampe said riot police flown in Sunday were trying to negotiate a peace with the villagers and bring those responsible for the kidnapping and fighting to justice.

Prediction: Provided they notice the story, moonbats will start squealing about “Imperialism! Pigs!” in

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I would reproduce the recipes, but you really need to see the pictures.

Deep Fried Bacon Cheese and Beer Dog, to be served with the Perfect Bacon Martini.

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