My gut is telling me this is a metric to evaluate the education system for families to move there (or remain there).
Having recently moved, education, was a huge metric – but it is tough to determine. SAT scores are much better than the state testing which vary from state to state. SAT scores gives you the outcome of K-12 experience.
edit - typos
Exactly. Their employees aren't going to want to move somewhere with bad school systems, even if SAT scores are largely just a measure of home prices. This doesn't strike me as being especially controversial.
Toronto is looking better now! We even have free Catholic schools!
If you account for many other factors.
The percentage of students that take the SAT in a given area is often overlooked, but it varies wildly by state.
You also have to correct for racial/cultural, language, and income bias in SAT scores.
You also have to account for racial/cultural,
language, and income bias
Who honestly ever says, "Oh, this location is fantastic... as long as you close your eyes and imagine a completely different population living there!"? There are many moral considerations to argue, but raw outcomes do usually prevail.
More problematic for Toronto: Canadians don't usually take the SAT unless they are aiming at US colleges. Most don't.
MA: https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2018/02/15/here-are-...
TX: https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2018/02/26/these-tex...
NJ: http://www.nj.com/education/2018/01/the_50_nj_high_schools_w...
IL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-school-report-card-...
IN: https://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/accountability/sa...
VA: http://www.nbc12.com/story/33261679/look-sat-scores-show-wid...
Also, as a Bostonian, I really hope this will edge us over Atlanta and whatnot, as MA has the highest standardized test scores in the nation. Been waiting for ages for this city to become more of a tech center.
Expensive housing can be a difficult problem, since lots of vested interests are opposed to any effective solution.
Whether or not schools are authorized to share information like that, companies ask all the time. I get tons of junk mail sent directly to me at school (as does every other teacher) asking for student names, DOB, address, etc. or for me to give the students the forms directly for them to fill out and then mail back.
It’s usually for very sketchy “scholarship” or “study abroad” opportunities (from companies and organizations no one has ever heard of and the return address is some random PO box in Deleware.)
Sometimes, however, it’s from straight up marketing companies.
The vast majority of teachers throw these things straight in the trash but some teachers will fill out any form they are given...
This vein of advertisement is governed by strict 'truth in advertising' standards, but not much else. Amazon has something for everyone and therefore doesn't need to worry about false claims - they just need to know what to put in front of you.
Per [1] the list is currently Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Washington DC, and Columbus, Ohio.
Boston has a tech workforce that has a lot in common with SillyValley so it seems like it would be a good culture fit and for a company like Amazon the benefits to being located in the same city and sharing the same workforce as the federal government are innumerable.
Denver is SV-lite. If that's what they were looking for there's a lot of other West coast options that would be on the list.
Dallas and Colombus seem to be the wildcards. They don't have the advantages or workforce or access that Boston or DC do but they're cheap and Amazon might be betting that its size and lack of competition there would let it dominate local politics. They might also be betting that they can tap into the "I'll move but not to CA" demographic" and get a good 5-10yr run as a monopoly on local talent until the tech scene there grows.
Austin, Chicago and Atlanta seem like the middle ground between Boston/DC and Dallas/Columbus.
I don't know enough about local economics in all those places to know how sorting by SAT scores would turn out.
I'm betting DC and Boston are gonna make the next cut. I don't think Denver will make the cut. the other four I have no idea.
[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-reveals-hq2-candidates...
Edit: Not sure why I'm being down-voted here. Is my analysis wrong or is the suggestion that there exists people in tech who don't want to be part of the SV tech scene just that abhorrent?
edit2 If I wanted to evaluate the pros and cons of all 20 cities listed in [1] I'd write a real article about it and post it on HN for internet points. I just evaluated the ones the author highlighted at the top.
Dallas isn't the #1 tech job location or anything, but there's a decent workforce and Amazon would be a fairly unique offering in the Dallas area.
Jokes aside, SAT score is not a good indicator of "success" in terms of salary at least in my personal circle. Some of my friends who got perfect scores on their SATs are all at sub-standard jobs, getting paid significantly less than the average salary. Of course, this is purely based on personal anecdote but attending top-tier schools seem to have a stronger correlation.
SAT is not a good indicator of success for a specific individual, but when sifting through thousands of people, it seemingly is a useful metric.
So lots of legislative activity around education policies.