I was reading James Taranto’s Best of the Web at OpinionJournal.com and found a link to an Arizona Republic story about Arizona being the “dumbest” state in the nation. A review of the story indicates that it was rated last by a Kansas outfit called Morgan Quitno Press.

You would think anyone trying to rank the smartest to dumbest states would use objective measurements of intellectual achievement, such as average IQ scores, performance on standardized tests, etc. Failing that, maybe you would measure the educational level of the population, possibly by calculating the percentage of the population that has a college or advanced degree.

Morgan Quitno Press, however, uses factors including “Public Elementary and Secondary School Revenue per $1,000 Personal Income”, “Median Pupil-Teacher Ratio in Public Primary Schools”, “Average Teacher Salary as a Percent of Average Annual Pay of All Workers”, and “Average Class Size in Public Elementary Schools.” In deciding how smart or dumb a state is.

In addition Morgan Quitno Press considers “Percent of School-Age Population in Public Schools” as a factor in its rankings. Apparently, Morgan Quitno Press thinks that private schools and home schooling makes people dumber.

Amazingly, Morgan Quitno Press does not factor in SAT test scores. It turns out that Arizonans do about average, or slightly better, on SAT and other standardized tests. Arizona, however, doesn’t throw enough money at its public education system and so draws the disapproval of Morgan Quitno Press.

The Morgan Quitno people make the annoying and all too common error of confusing an outcome (in this case intelligence) with the effort (money) spent on obtaining it. If money spent on a project equated to quality then the Big Dig in Boston would be the greatest and safest highway of all and Seattle would have the best schools in the State of Washington. The truth is that the Big Dog was a boondoggle that produced unsafe roadways, and the Seattle Schools are an ongoing disgrace to the region.

Arizona, however, is simply doing a good job getting maximum value for their education dollars. The people at Morgan Quitno Press don’t seem to be too bright, maybe they should apologize to Arizona.
- posted by Thomas @ 4:13 PM