Blame the Statistics, Not the Statistician

             Greetings once again, my friends.  After many, painstakingly long hours, I have managed to get a hold of some statistics for you all.  Now, keep in mind, I don't have all the facts (obviously) and I am not infallible (again, obviously), but these are reliable facts from reliable sources.  No Wikipedia here.  First of all, I wanted to check in on the country's contribution to education.  I found out that in 1971, education spending was $4,300 per student.  Since then, education spending has risen to almost $9,000 per student.  And for all that spending, from 1971 to the present-day, math and reading scores have flatlined.  One of my most important goals for this post was to get some academic proficiency percentages for each state.  I managed to get the reading proficiency percentages of eighth graders for most of the states and the math proficiency percentages of eighth graders for a few of them.  Here are the reading proficiency percentages. They are staggering!

• Alabama: 21%
• Mississippi: 17%
• New Jersey: 39%
• Connecticut: 37%
• New York: 32%
• Arizona (where I live): 24%
• California: 21%
• Georgia: 26%
• Virginia: 25%
• Massachusettes: 43%
• Wisconsin: 30%
• Tennessee: 26%
• South Carolina: 25%
• North Carolina: 28%
• Kentucky (where my family is from): 28%
• Michigan: 28%
• Indiana (where I was born): 31%
• West Virginia: 23%
• Delaware: 31%
• Ohio: 36%
• Maryland: 33%
• Pennsylvania: 36%
• Nebraska: 35%

             If you'll notice, not one of them is above 50% and if you think that's bad, wait til you hear this: the lowest percentage of eighth graders who are proficient in reading in the country is in our nation's capital, Washington D.C. with just 12%.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find the percentages for Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Hawaii, or Alaska, butif and when I do, you'll be the first to know.
             I was not able to get ahold of many eighth grade math proficiency percentages, which is a shame, but these are the ones I have so far:

• Alabama: 18% (Ouch!)
• Mississippi: 14% (Double ouch!)
• New Jersey: 40%
• Connecticut: 35%
• New York: 30%
• Arizona: 26%
• California: 24%

               If I find any more, I'll let you know.