States Ranked: Smart to Dumb

The smartest state is Vermont. The dumbest is Arizona.

There are the 2005-2006 findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50 states. States were graded on 21 factors, including student achievement and attendance, positive outcomes, strong student-teacher relationships and school district efficiency. Other factors are the number of high school graduates, reading, writing and math proficiency, percent of school-age kids in public schools, high school drop-out rates, student-teacher ratios and class size.

State ranks:

1 - Vermont
2 - Connecticut
3 - Massachusetts
4 - New Jersey
5 - Maine
6 - Minnesota
7 - Virginia
8 - Wisconsin
9 - Montana
10- New York

Etc ....

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/package.jsp?name=fte/smartstates/smartstates

Not sure.... Damn. That says a lot though.

a pattern.

and i believe northern virginia definitely is a major factor in boosting virginia's ranking

And we have the fantastic Doug Wilder as our mayor. Even the Repukes like him.

AZ is a RED state but with a Democratic governor. She is doing her best to fix the poor education system here, but she doesn't get much support from the legislators. Arizona isn't the DUMBEST state, just the worst educated!

Secondly, the people in Arizona are stone aged stupid. The more West Valley, the more mormon or the more money they have, the dumber they become. It is a generalization, but the rich, the mormons and the West Valley troglodites are the ones who vote Republican.

My state has the dumbest students in America!!! I am embarassed to be from Arizona!!!

Can I take this website to the Arizona forum?

For instance, Arizona has a lot of Indian Reservations, and there is a high dropout rate and issues there.

I don't think there is any way to really accurately represent 'smart' and 'stupid' as far as the states go.

...which is why I plan to homeschool.

Notice we're both in the SW. I'm sure poverty has something to do with the effects of education in our states.

Many of the states which don't perform as well in this survey have a high number of poor people and minorities who don't always get the advantage of some of the other students and their states don't spend as much on education as some of the other states.

other factors perhaps but then again I always found Sociology, statistics and demographics interesting. :)

There is no way Texas made it on 24!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Usually on rankings like these, we're in the last 5.

At one point we were 49 out of 50.

Still home of the Flying Monkey Right.

I did not attend K-12 here in GA. I graduated from UGA which is an excellent school. I just don't understand the huge disparity between our public K-12 schools and our research universities. I suppose it's all a matter of money. Poor districts have poor schools. :(

Can you say culture shock? LOL

We're in this county for one high school in particular, I do love it here, but imagine my surprise when we plopped ourselves down right in the middle of the science textbook sticker wars! It's been rather hard to explain to the folks back home in Illinois. It may explain, however, why the K-12 schools lag behind here. I think there are far too many people trying to interject their religious beliefs into the public school curriculum. It's odd, really, considering how many private schools are available here. I would think they would just send their kids to Christian schools if they don't want them to be exposed to Evolution.

My son just finished the middle school Abstinence Health unit. He came home with his head exploding every day. I'm grooming quite the radical, he asked a lot of probing questions of his teacher and unfortunately, his classmates didn't understand a word he was saying!

He starts high school next year and my hubby says we will most likely move to another part of the Atlanta area once my son starts college. Like I say, I love it here, but having your head explode daily gets quite tiresome. LOL

What I find most amusing is that I'm being called a troll by posters on DU and I'm considered a raving Lunatic Leftist Liberal in my neighborhood. Go figure.

:hi: I live in a blue city in GA. I've never lived in the Atlanta 'burbs but I know people who do. Boy howdy, you landed right in a hornets nest when you moved to Cobb County! You are right about the overly religous trying to insert religion into school. How annoying. It happens in mostly white, middle-class, suburban schools. In more diverse (ethnically and socially) areas, the religous crap really drops off. My step-daughter goes to Duluth HS in Gwinnett CO. I don't htink they have a "religous" problem there. I'll have to ask her about it.

I'd suggest reading the DU rules again if you're getting called a troll. You may be unknowingly breaking some of the more subtle DU rules. Good luck. :)

:wtf:

obesity rates
teen pregnancy

You name it, NM is almost always in the bottom 5.

Usually in the TOP 5 for that. *sigh*

;)

Well, we can't win em all in the race to the bottom. However, we are #1 in the incarceration rate for women by a big lead!! Yippee!!! We're No. 1, We're No. 1, etc.

We're 39 because we sent Inhofe and Coburn to Washington, thereby increasing the average intellect of the state.

Bull.

lobbied hard?

lower states though.

:bounce: :toast: :party:

if we campare the states that went for bush against the states that went for Kerry, we get........





I'm picking up a pattern here, I don't know about you. :shrug:

PA missed the top ten by 1 - still pretty high though...and i went to elementary and middle school in NJ, so i guess i did pretty well :)

and he went to public school. It says we are with the ten dumb states. Oh well. At least we aren't last.

If we could only get the courts to let us use those private school vouchers we would rocket to number 1.

Damn activist judges.

:eyes:

in self-reported public school outcomes.

There's no way that South Carolina could truthfully rank ahead of Washington, Oregon, Utah, and Hawaii, for just one instance of a very evident "Pinocchio effect".

One of the many ill effects of the "No Child Left Behind" Act and its intra-state predecessors is that school administrators facing the greatest educational challenges get punished for truthfully reporting outcomes for their students. Schools that need the most help get de-funded or shut down unless they lie about dropout rates, omit the test results of their poorest students, etc.

States like Connecticut and Vermont may truly have the best average educational outcomes, but their high average family incomes make excellence much less of a challenge than outcomes in, say, Arizona Alaska, or New York..

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
:cry: :cry:

To be fair though, TN is still higher than it used to be (talking bottom five here).

I am outraged. Morans.

:party: :dunce:
wow, they're both conical hats... it's like, um, means something or whatever...