RE: Theological Attack On Public Schools

["Dale Courtney" <dmcourtn@moscow.com>]

Quick response to a lengthy rebuttal: 

Greg writes: 

>    First of all, none of the census information Dale provides 
> has a thing to do with private versus public school 
> enrollments. The data does examine populations, which have 
> some indirect correlation. And why the mix of Latah County 
> and Moscow populations? These two groups are competing for 
> school students, not sharing them.

Ron noted previously (16 May) that the problem is the boundaries of the
Moscow School district aren't congruent with the boundaries of the
city--they're larger. To get the census numbers for the MSD, you'd have
to compile it based on county census tracts, and even then, I'm not sure
the boundaries would match exactly.

>    You say Latah County's 17-and under population has 
> increased 14.1 percent in 10 years. What does that have to do 
> with the growth of Moscow's school age population? 

Hmmm. Well, let's see -- as I recall, most of the school-aged children
are still under 18. According to
(http://www2.census.gov/census_2000/datasets/demographic_profile/Idaho/2
kh16.pdf), 5,192 6-17 year-olds are in the county are. 

The 14.1% I quoted is the "Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000".

You have to go to the PDF file for the city's census data: 
http://www2.census.gov/census_2000/datasets/demographic_profile/Idaho/2k
h16.pdf

Check out "Householders with Own Child under 18". There are 3,316. If we
include the "other relatives under 18 (64), that leaves 3,380 children
under 18 who live at home (that should remove the vast majority of U of
I 17 year-olds). 

With MSD having 2,358 students, that leaves 30.2% of the Moscow children
elsewhere. I rounded down to 25% to be conservative.

> A little 
> bit I guess, but it ain't too helpful. My guess? Growth in 
> towns like Viola - where kids go to the Potlatch School 
> District, not MSD- could be contributing to a loss of 
> school-age kids in Moscow.

Ah! That's where the 357 children have gone. To Viola!

Even if I granted that there was a mass exodus from Moscow to the
surrounding schools, that still doesn't explain the *increase* in
children in Latah county by 20.3%

I guess those 1,000 showed up in Genesee. 

>   For those who really care about Moscow enrollments, there 
> will soon be a more significant measure of private and public 
> school enrollments released by the U.S. Census Bureau, called 
> SF3, for Idaho and Moscow. With this release, from the long 
> form, you will be able to examine enrollments by race, gender 
> and type of school for the city, state or even for the 
> neighborhood block.

We shall indeed see when the SF3 comes out in early Sept
(http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/sumfile3.html). You will
note from my previous email that I said that already.
 
BTW, for those of you who enjoy trend analysis -- check out: 
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsTable?_lang=en&_vt_name=D
EC_1990_STF3_DP2&_geo_id=05000US16057

In 1990, only 9.5% of our children were in private schools (I'm assuming
that includes homeschoolers).  

I'm curious to see what it was in 2000. And then to do an extrapolation
to 2010 and 2015...

>   Until then, Dougs and Dale are bellowing falsehoods. 

I'm more than willing to publicly apologize if I'm wrong about this. 

We shall see what the SF3 brings in early September...

Dale