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Which State Has the Worst School System?

There's a lot of focus right now on innovation in education: how to support it nationally, how to find smart local solutions that can work at...

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorNov 13, 2009
Siobhan O'Connor
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There's a lot of focus right now on innovation in education: how to support it nationally, how to find smart local solutions that can work at scale, how to get our schools out of the gutter, quite simply. And since sometimes it's helpful to know what's wrong in order to figure out how to make it right, a handy new report-which is utterly depressing-might provide some clues. Some states fared okay; others totally bombed. How do you think yours did?Well, you can take a look at this new report by the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to find out. The report, along with an interactive map (obviously the best part), reveals a "staggering" crisis in American schools. The map allows you to click through to see how your home state performed in eight key categories, as well as its overall score.I was bummed to see that among the biggest losers was D.C., which has had a bad wrap but where there's a lot of interesting and innovative things underway to get the schools in shape.A grand total of zero states got an A. A few predictable ones got Bs (New York, Arizona, California, Massachusetts), a scary amount got Cs and Ds, and three got big fat Fs.
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