This fall, the American Legislative Exchange Council issued its eleventh annual "report card" on American educational results. ALEC, is officially non-partisan, but de facto conservative... but before you dismiss their results as biased, understand that in their list of highest ranking states, 6 of the top 8 are "blue" states in which Kerry won a majority.

ALEC's large analysis is statistically based on externally available data such as standardized scores, and available online (pdf) in detail, and I see no reason not to accept their results and conclusions.

I'm inserting my own disclaimer here: even though, in the article title, I said, for brevity, that Minnesota is #1 in education. These results are based on standardized test scores, which are a questionable measure of "education" in the broad sense. Nevertheless, these results do contain information of importance.

The Bad News

Overall, the facts presented by this year's Report Card on American Education give us no cause for celebration. In fact, they confirm the same trend presented in past years' reports: increased spending without corresponding improvement in student performance. Over ten years have passed since the Goals 2000 agenda was proposed, and America has failed to reach these goals, despite increasing per pupil expenditures by more than 50 percent over the past twenty years.

It is clear after studying the data and results that the policies of the past have failed to meet the educational needs of our country's children. If we continue to spend more money on the existing educational system in an attempt to buy our way to better student achievement, we will condemn another generation of students to mediocrity.

Let's not keep making the same mistakes that have brought our schools to their present condition. We need to challenge the status quo and pursue serious fundamental reform to improve our educational system. Only then can real progress be made in student performance. Our children deserve nothing less.

A little improvement

In 2003, 73 percent of public school eighth graders taking the NAEP test performed below the proficiency level in mathematics. Thirty-two percent of all eighth graders in 2003 performed below the basic level in mathematics. These figures represent a slight improvement over 2000, when 74 percent of eighth graders scored below the proficiency level and 37 percent performed below the basic level.

It may be impossible to fairly compare one state's student performance against another. Minnesota, for example, has a high median income, and lots of technical industry, both of which tend to cause education to be emphasized among residents. What the ALEC study looks for is not so much which states are doing well or poorly, but to try to find controllable causes that might explain better or poorer results.

Spending more does not help

Per pupil expenditures have increased a dramatic 53.5 percent in constant dollars - from $4,924 in 1981-82 to $7,557 in 2001-02. The number of public school students increased just 18.3% over that period.

Again, that ALEC result is emphatically repeated... that spending more money doesn't help... there appears to be no connection between changes in SAT scores over the past two decades and increases or decreases in educational inputs such as expenditures per pupil. This study deflates the most common demands made on taxpayers by education officials. Smaller class sizes and higher teacher pay do not seem to affect results.

What DOES help?

You have to look hard in this report to find causes that clearly produce better results, and they're not strong correlations: higher student achievement is weakly associated with MORE pupils per teacher, LESS federal involvement, and smaller schools.

Not proof, but suspicious coincidence...

Here are the 6 states that received the highest proportion of their educational funds from the feds:

1. Mississippi 15.3% and ranks 50th in performance
2. DC  14.6% and ranks 51st in performance
3. South Dakota 14.1% and ranks 10th in performance
4. New Mexico 13.0% and ranks 49th in performance
5. Louisiana 12.6% and ranks 48th in performance
6. Alaska  12.5% and ranks 43rd in performance

The Manhattan Institute Center for Civic Innovation computes an Educational Freedom Index, based on how free residents are to choose educational alternatives. It takes into account voucher programs, home schooling freedom, charter schools, and being able to choose among districts.

Minnesota and Wisconsin, rated 1 and 2 based on test scores, are rated 5th and 6th best in terms of educational freedom. Again... not proof, but hard to ignore.

The ALEC study expresses the opinion that educational results are improved by better teachers. I suspect that the personal experience of most of us verifies that... many of us have stories about one or two teachers who had a very positive effect on our school experience.

Teachers become better with experience, and they have better results if they're allowed to teach using the methods they've learned work best. Students learn when good teachers make learning fun. My input from some excellent, award-winning teachers over the years has been that schools have become more rigid, more bureaucratic, and that imposed state and federal programs have taken a lot of classroom control from teachers. Campaigns to reduce class size have resulted in having to hire more teachers... younger, less-experienced, lower-paid teachers. That's not a criticism of younger teachers, but experience, once laboriously gained, should not be sacrificed, especially to elitist programs generated by "experts" in quasi-political state and federal educational offices.

Here is the complete ranking of states based on educational achievement:

Minnesota 1
Wisconsin 2
Massachusetts 3
New Hampshire 4
Iowa 5
Montana 6
Vermont 7
Washington 8
Kansas 9
South Dakota 10
Oregon 11
Nebraska 12
Wyoming 13
North Dakota 14
Connecticut 15
Ohio 16
Virginia 17
Alaska 18
Missouri 19
Utah 20
New Jersey 21
Arizona 22
Maine 23
Maryland 24
Indiana 25
New York 26
Idaho 27
Nevada 28
Colorado 29
Michigan 30
North Carolina 31
Pennsylvania 32
Rhode Island 33
Delaware 34
Oklahoma 35
California 36
Illinois 37
West Virginia 38
Kentucky 39
Tennessee 40
Texas 41
South Carolina 42
Arkansas 43
Hawaii 44
Florida 45
Georgia 46
Alabama 47
Louisiana 48
New Mexico 49
Mississippi 50
District of Columbia 51