Vicky tries to justify her selection of Austin as a relevant city for comparison:
Austin, Texas is relevant because of the following excerpt from Michael Atherton's post of 12/16/02:The Twin Cities beat out such regions as San Francisco, Austin, Texas and Stockholm, Sweden to be ranked as the world's most knowledge competitive region. The honor was bestowed on Minneapolis-St. Paul by Robert Huggins Associates, a research company in the United Kingdom thatstudies international and regional competitiveness. Huggins said its "World Knowledge Competitiveness index 2002" is based upona series of indicators, including the number ofmanagers per 1,000 inhabitants; the number of IT, computer manufacturing,biotechnology and automotive engineeringemployees per 1,000 inhabitants; the number of patents registered per million people; mean gross monthly earnings; unemployment rates and per capita public spending on education. Patrick replies: Vicky: A true demographic measure would take the following into consideration: --Number of students who participate in free/reduced lunch program in the district --City unemployment --Per capita income --Mobility of students in schools --Percent of school district students participating in special education programs I think if these measures were used, Minneapolis would compare to cities like Seattle and Milwaukee. Given that per-student spending starts soaring when you have a high percentage of students needing special education services, it matters how many kids in special ed are in a given district. Frankly, I *hope* minneapolis doesn't have to compare itself to Texas schools, where they are notorious for teaching to the standardized test and generally ignoring the things schools should give to their communities (i.e. well rounded students and centers of community life). On the Minneapolis Foundation Grant: Congratulations, and kudos (again) to the generous folks at TMF, who are truly a community treasure. Patrick Peterson Dinkytwon (for now) ===== __________________ PatrickPeterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim:a11235patrick tel:612.379.4722 __________________ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
