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I love . . .
... this state more and more every day.
So many stupid Massholes here.
Maybe the children get good test scores, but the politicians lack basic reasoning skills. And the drivers have yet to figure out what a red light means.
People from Massachusetts are the worst...
...except for the people from every other state.
Some perspective, please
> the politicians lack basic reasoning skills
And this makes Massachusetts politicians different from those elsewhere -- how?
> drivers have yet to figure out what a red light means
And this problem is unique to Massachusetts?
Chicken
Apt screen name.
First, let me just say that I
First, let me just say that I love living in Boston, in case some people interpret what about to say as being down on the city as a whole.
That being said, I’ve lived in the Midwest, Maine, and the Gulf Coast, and I can say from experience that Boston drivers are something else.
If it’s rush hour in Chicago and a guy whizzes across four lanes of I-94 traffic at 80 mph, cutting you off to make his exit, he does it because he needs to make his exit and he doesn’t care at all about you. Spite doesn’t factor into the equation, and you can’t let yourself get too offended because you’d do the same thing to him.
From the way some Boston drivers act, they seem to think that when the driver in front of them doesn’t go right away on green, every second that ticks by as they’re stuck at the light is a denial of the validity of their existences. They take it personally. Yes, I know this is anecdotal, doesn't cite numbers, etc.--I'm not offering it as evidence in a court of law--it's just what I've observed.
As I said above, I love Boston, but one thing it is not is “easygoing.”
So right
Milwaukee Mike, I am born and raised in Massachusetts. I took my first steps in the Bay State and learned to drive there too. You are absolutely right in your observations. In Massachusetts we hold drivers responsible to other drivers and this responsibility includes not holding us up unnecessarily. I have lived in Sydney, Australia for the past ten years and I still can't shake this attitude. Drivers here are very relaxed. The fast lane regularly moves 10 miles under the speed limit. You can imagine me, chomping at the bit, trying to get around... This attitude that you have described so well, is very ingrained in our culture. It may not be a weakness though. Massachusetts is one of (if not the) fastest state. We expect things fast. We spend less time in line because it moves faster, we walk from A to B faster, and we get more work done in less time, making us, by definition, more productive. I find that everything in Sydney is slow. I may be easy going, but it is also less productive.
From what I can tell there is
From what I can tell there is no state-by-state PISA score. The referenced scores are some kind of cross-tabulation between PISA 2006 and NAEP 2005 scores. It beats me why it doesn't make more sense to simply compare states using NAEP scores.
Also, there's been a rapid growth in the share of students who score at the advanced level in math, up approximately 50% from 2005 to 2009. Is that because the standards are lower or because NCLB made schools shift curriculum down the grades, so that students are introduced to concepts that help them reach Advanced level at earlier age than was the case ten years ago (NAEP is taken by 4th and 8th grader, PISA by 9th graders)?
Also, there is no statistically significant difference in the share of white students at the the Advanced level in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, New Jersey and Maryland (and perhaps another state or two) in the most recent NAEP scores.
Also odd: The share of Asians at the advanced level is about the same as for whites, nationwide.