Hungry minds

Boy, it sure was a blast watching the governor and the teachers slap each other around all last fall. For more pointless fun, let’s look at other reasons kids might be failing in school. Here’s a breakdown from the California Department of Education showing which elementary schools in the Sacramento City Unified School District did best on the state’s Academic Performance Index (API). We also included the scores of the 10 worst-performing elementary schools. We then compared their scores to the percentage of students who qualify for free lunches—which can be used as at least a rough indicator of the wealth of that population.

The results: Poor kids and low test scores seem to cluster together—but not so much with rich kids and high test scores. But hey, we’re not scientists over here. It’s called Unfiltered for a reason. Go to www.cde.ca.gov and click on “Data & Statistics” to come up with your own half-baked theories.