The latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal some interesting dichotomies. “Among the eight [states ‘where low-income students outperform the national average (to a statistically significant degree) in both subjects’], Massachusetts remains the leader in math after narrowing the focus to low-income students,” John Hood points out in The Carolina Journal. “But in reading, the top performer for disadvantaged students is Indiana, a Republican state that ranks 49th in spending and earns conservative plaudits for its policies on parental choice, charter schools, and performance-based teacher compensation.”
Hood, the founder of the John Locke Foundation which publishes The Carolina Journal, argues that the NAEP numbers in and of themselves, are not an argument for liberal or conservative policies.
