[Phys-l] data: National Assessment of Educational Progress

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

Here's a trove of data on student scores (4th grade and 8th grade)
with state-to-state comparisons and some limited year-to-year
comparisons.

U.S. Department of Education
Institute of Education Sciences
National Assessment of Educational Progress 		
State Comparisons / Data Explorer

  http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde/statecomp/

As an amusing exercise, first try ranking the states according
to score, using your best guess ... and then compare that to 
the actual data.

There are scores for reading, writing, math, and science.
The latest math scores are from 2007, but the latest science
scores are from 2005.  Don't ask me why.

There is a "Quick Reference Guide" which is "only" 355K
but you can skip it.  Just push the buttons and see what
happens.  In Box 3 choose "percentiles" unless you have
some reason to prefer one of the other options.


There is an "export to excel" button, which I find useful.
It allows me to do computations on the data, then sort,
et cetera.

I don't pretend to know exactly what all this data means,
and surely there are flaws in the data ... but still I
reckon this data means SOMETHING.