New ALEC report card not kind to Oklahoma

"Today the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released a new book that provides a simple, direct way of comparing the effectiveness of public education in every state," writes Matt Ladner, co-author of the Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress and Reform. 

For the Report Card, we rank all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on student test scores and learning gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We focused in particular on the scores of low-income students who were not in special education programs from 2003 to 2009, the years in which all jurisdictions took the tests used by NAEP.

Our rankings give the same weight to overall performance (which states had the highest test scores) and overall gains (which states made the most progress over time). 

Oklahoma ranks a disappointing 43rd in the nation.