Word: wobegon
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...their opinions as "consensus" forecasts. A 2003 study by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that the Blue Chip Consensus Forecast, which polls some 50 economists each month, is consistently better than any of its individual members. The researchers dubbed that result a "reverse Lake Wobegon effect": everyone was below average. During economic turning points - like the one we're currently in - the individual forecasts veered further off the mark...
...problem. It required each state to ensure that its students achieve "universal proficiency" in reading and math - but allowed each to define what that meant. The result was that many states made their job easier by setting their bar lower. This race to the bottom resulted in a Lake Wobegon world where every state declared that its kids were better than average. Take the amazing case of Mississippi. According to the standards it set for itself, 89% of its fourth-graders were proficient or better in reading, making them the best in the nation. Yet according to the random sampling...
...creativity isn't the problem in places like this gorgeous, wind-strafed corner of Minnesota, where clergy are trying out several innovative ways to keep God in the heartland. The fertile, Scandinavian-settled farm towns in the Red River Valley were the models for Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon; for decades, thousands of farmers comfortably worked 80-acre lots and prayed in small, ethnically uniform churches. But starting in the 1970s, Wobegon was hit with sinking commodity prices and job-cutting farm technology, a combo that sharply reduced the population. Churches foundered. But only in the past few years have...
...rigorous standards despite the three dozen e-mails he gets every day from Fairgrade supporters. He notes that in a neighboring district, 36% of students who graduated in June had a weighted GPA of 4.0 or higher. "I moved here from Minnesota, but I'd never been to Lake Wobegon," Gibson says, referring to the fictional town where all the children are above average. "Do we really want to have a reputation as an easy-A jurisdiction?" He adds, "It doesn't improve their achievement. It just improves their achievement on paper...
Home's aesthetic is Larry Flynt meets Lake Wobegon: all the men are strong, the women big-breasted and the children--well, there are no children. Just shorter adults...