This seems like a strange arguement, here you are arguing

1) There is lots of economic mobility to Florida despite their poor education scores.

2) There is not a lot of mobility.

Seems contradicting.   Outside which, though Florida is ranked poorly in achivement.  Standards wise it is one of the highest ranked schools.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/13/16stateofthestates.h30.html?tkn=OZWFBPfso6GowQRnY7ZhYpGKp6j6W1ufX5AC&cmp=clp-edweek#

I can't really speak of florida, but I can speak of Nevada.  One of the worst states education wise.  Most people with kids either flees or puts their kids in charter schools if they can avoid it.

Yet still saw plenty of population growth due to construction jobs and illegal immigration.  AS such, the tax base has kinda collapsed, Nevada is in huge debt... can't attract buisnesses because it's workers education is poor... etc.

What i rather meant was that the pull of one factor is not going to effect mobility enough to make the system work. Hence the headlong rush to the sun-belt where most starts are underachievers on education, and where i imagine they would be underachievers on health care if they were obligated to provide it.

A) I'd argue healthcare is seen as a lot more important.

B) I'd argue the sunbelt states don't actually underachive.

The problem with the way your defining education is, your treating each state as if it's given the same things to work with. 

Sunbelt has low graduation numbers sure.  Which includes California... who also has low graduation rates?  New York.  Both of those states try hard on education, yet fail.

All the best results seem to be in the northenrn central area of the country....

I'd argue a big problem is...

As illegal immigrants tend to do poorly in schools, as do their children as illegal immigrant parents generally don't have the right socialization to get the most out of their children in school.  (assertiveness, keeping their kids on their pace, having time.)

Nevada is actually a pretty good indicator of this, it's school system graduation rates NOSEDIVED right as it's population exploded due to massive immigration due to construction and the like.

The rest of the areas that do poorly are well... poor... and not exactly destinitation hot spots.

It would be interesting to see some education studies that were normalized for different conditions.  In otherwords, would students actually do worse in said states, or is it the students in those states are doing worse?

That problem factors in, certainly, but i was assuming their curriculums and standards were lower as well. It could well be hearsay, but a friend of mine from Florida claimed that out of state colleges don't even look at grades from Florida public schools (and judge candidates on other factors)

Well like I said in the post before this post, and provided a link for.... they ranked 5th last year according to Education week.

When did you talk to your friend?

Cause Florida was like... 31st, 4 years ago, then it shot up to 14th, then 10th, and finally 5th last year.  With no rankings out this year.