Politicizing the numbers

Here's a report that over-states a problem:

http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2 ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Here's a quote:

As a result of the cuts, the national student-teacher ratio increased from 2008 to 2010, from 15.3 to 16, the report said, reversing nearly a decade of gains.

The 300,000 jobs "lost" had very little impact on the overall quality of education in the USA.

- The "lost" jobs occurred mostly through retirements and turn-over.
- Student demographics changed at the same time.
- the change in the student/teacher ratio is not very substantive. (notice they rounded the 2010 figure)
- the figure comes from the White House - not the more stoic National Center for Education Statistics

The last official publication was here:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/snf200910/t ... ble_04.asp

This is simply political hot air (want to stop global warming? Shut down DC)