Terrell writes: > Its hard to tell from the chart in the Strib but I think that's a bad > interpretation. I think they are comparing students in schools located > within the city boundaries. The chart doesn't tell us what year is > being reported but the 1332 public students in Mendota Heights plus the > 3520 in South St. Paul (total 4852) looks a lot like the 4760 that the > Dept of Children Families and Learning reports for the South St. Paul > Mendota school district for the 2001-2 school year (what part of the > year, I don't know.
I'm guessing here, but the Strib used census tracts, which should only measure kids RESIDING within a certain geographic area - I don't think the location of the private schools makes any difference (expect that some people may move to Mendota to be near a bunch of private schools). It would make sense that the numbers Terrell cited above add up - since public school attendance is much more geographically based. Census tracts allow a multi-city school district to be split into specific communities. So I think the Strib comparison is more apples-to-apples than Terrell fears, though the explanations for the varying percentages are the stuff of variety. (I agree, though, that the paper should've explained its methodology more...) I'm wondering how the census and Strib counted home-schooled kids, though... By the way, another online chart put Minneapolis eighth of 20 cities with populations above 35,000. David Brauer King Field _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
