wobegone

In New York last year, 96 percent of teachers were rated either effective or highly effective, much like Lake Wobegone’s entirely above-average student body.

Yes, where we get intensive concentrations of talented teachers and administrators, we also get odds-beating results with children in poverty, but this isn’t Lake Wobegone, and all children can’t have above-average teachers all the time.

Perhaps that can be explained by the Lake Wobegone effect, after the mythical town invented by Garrison Keillor in which all the children are above average.

Perhaps it’s the Lake Wobegone Effect: Everyone believes himself or herself to be above average.

She sent, therefore, to Mary Markham, to tell her that she was too wobegone to come that day; and, returning to her little chamber at the inn, she sat down to weep, and pass the evening with her memories.